Technology
David Brewster
My book ghostwriting tools in 2021

Every now and then I’m asked about the various resources I use when I’m working on ghostwriting a book. These things change occasionally, so I thought it would be a good idea to share what I am using as my main book writing tools in 2021. So here they are: from recording interviews to organising to drafting to (almost) collaborating.

My book ghostwriting tools in 2021
Work Life
David Brewster
When to avoid showing your vulnerable side

Being willing to reveal a bit of yourself, especially through a bit of self-effacing humour, will lighten your text and give your readers something to connect to.

But this blog post is not about that sort of vulnerability.

No, this time I want to remind you of two of the less inspiring but just-as-important vulnerabilities every writer faces. Those vulnerabilities are backup and data security.

I was reminded recently about this by a rare computer crash that led to me losing a small amount of work. It wasn’t important and was easily recovered, but it could have been so much worse. Imagine losing a whole book to a hard drive crash!

When to avoid showing your vulnerable side
Write a book
David Brewster
No time, money or skill? You can still get your ...

If there’s one thing you learn from spending a chunk of your career in the world of books and writing, it’s that there are a lot of great stories out there. Personal stories of remarkable success against the odds. Business stories of risk taking and growth. Political stories of intrigue and persistence.

It would be great if all these stories could be told. As Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Ideally, the stories would be recorded in books because books last. They go onto shelves and into libraries. They won’t disappear or become unreadable with new technologies.

Unfortunately, many terrific stories are never written down. Sometimes that’s because their owners don’t want to share them. Often

No time, money or skill? You can still get your book written
Reviews
David Brewster
The ghostwriter's nightmare scenario

Ghostwriter characters don't make it into fiction very often, but when they do they always seem to find themselves in jeopardy. 

In the 2010 Roman Polanski film The Ghost Writer, Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter working for a former British prime minister. In the end he knows too much and ... it doesn't end well. 

In the Netflix series House of Cards, Paul Sparks plays ghostwriter Thomas Yates who, after struggling to extract a decent memoir out of the president, fails to keep his professional distance, you might say. It takes a while – three seasons in fact – but it doesn't end well for him either.

And now we have Australian writer Richard Flanagan's latest novel, First Person, in which the narrator is a ghostwriter hired to author the memoir of a notorious conman. The story was inspired by Flanagan's own experience, very early in his career, of ghostwriting the autobiography of fraudster John Friedrich in 1991.

The ghostwriter's nightmare scenario
Writing
David Brewster
The joy of a good yarn

I love that my work as a ghostwriter gives me the opportunity to help people get their stories told. What I love even more is the fact that working on other people's stories gives me a front-row seat to those yarns.

Take Around the Grounds, for instance – a book that will be released by Finch Publishing on August 1. 

For this book I've been working with former ABC radio broadcaster Peter Newlinds. Peter's story is a celebration of sport, but from the spectator's side of the fence. This perspective gives the story a level of accessibility that most sporting memoirs, written as they are by former players, can't have. Few of us have the ability to play elite sport, but all of us are more than capable of joining in from the relative safety of the stands.

Of course we don't all have access to the commentary box as Peter did…

The joy of a good yarn

history

A better approach to capturing old memories

A better approach to capturing old memories

Over the recent holiday break we were chatting amongst the family about the need to capture the stories of our parents' generation while we still can. How often have I heard people speak with regret about never having done so, their parent's fantastic stories and valuable lessons going with them to the grave?

We were together as a family for a few days and dipped in and out of this conversation over that time. Quite a few stories came up too – stories of my parents' childhoods, the early years of their marriage and so on. Some I'd heard before but there were quite a few special ones that were new to me ... which isn't bad given I'm on the 'wrong' side of 50.

All of which got me thinking. The 'typical' approach to capturing a family history is not as good as it could be...

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5 ways to ensure your company's story lives on

5 ways to ensure your company's story lives on

This year my wife has been studying family history, most recently doing a subject in which she had to collate a series of pictures of her mother at different stages in her life and tell the stories behind the photos. Joan died 16 years ago so my wife was totally reliant on any notes on the photographs along with existing family history, insofar as there is any, and the recollections of surviving members of her mum’s generation and their offspring.

Watching her pull this information together was a good lesson in the importance of keeping notes and records of our lives – in how what seems trivial today could be of deep interest to those who follow us. There were many frustrated hours spent trying to decipher some images – work that could have been avoided had those images been labelled. 

This applies as much to the business context as it does the family one. In fact you could argue that it is even more important in the business context.

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In the Facebook era, it's okay not to share

In the Facebook era, it's okay not to share

Remember when Twitter first arrived on the scene? No one could work out what it was for. It was marketed as a means of quickly and briefly sharing what you were up to with friends, and originally that’s what people did. Its early reputation was as a fairly inane way of telling people what you were eating for lunch – whether they were interested or not.

Users quite quickly adapted Twitter to their own needs. It became a platform for sharing far more than personal trivia and grew into a pretty handy way of keeping up with things you’re interested in. Before long the ‘what are you up to?’ concept appeared at the top of Facebook streams and ever since we’ve been inundated with platforms for sharing our lives, from Instagram to Pinterest to Snapchat and hundreds of variations and imitations. Almost every smartphone app offers ‘share’ functionality, as does every website.

Somewhere along this journey the tail started wagging the dog.

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Will you and your business disappear without a trace?

Will you and your business disappear without a trace?

The recent commemoration of Anzac Day’s 100th anniversary was as good a reminder as anything of the importance of keeping records of our history. Photographs from that time may be grainy, blurry and often creased, but they still manage to provide incredible insight into a very different time. This, of course, is even more important now as there are no remaining survivors of that campaign – pictures and words are all we have left.

Which begs the question. In another 100 years, what memories will today’s generations have left to share with our counterparts of the future?

On the surface this seems a ridiculous question. After all, we take billions more photos and write trillions more words today than were collected in the early 20th century. But it’s not that simple. There are two major problems, both relating to the fact that so much of what could be ‘tomorrow’s memorabilia of today’ is not stored in permanently useful formats.

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Is your business remembering the lessons of the past?

Is your business remembering the lessons of the past?

Last week I was walking past a small local warehouse when I overheard a conversation taking place between what looked like one of the supervisors and a storeman. They were ‘debating’ what had happened to some lost stock – something about someone not recording the paperwork properly.

It was an innocuous conversation really, but it struck a chord with me. I knew, because I used to work in that sort of environment, that the same conversation was probably taking place in hundreds of warehouses, large and small, across my city that day. They took place yesterday, and they would take place the next day. Ad infinitum.

The repetitiveness of this type of situation raises the question: If many people in workplaces spend a lot of time fixing problems, why is it that the same problems keeping reappearing, over and over and over again?

The answer is simple: because organisations rarely learn from their mistakes.

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I Got it, You Got it, We ALL Got it

I Got it, You Got it, We ALL Got it

I've got a bee in my bonnet and of late it has got more and more active. Someone's got to help! Now I pride myself on not being a pedant on subjects linguistic. Your pronunciation of pronunciation is no concern of mine. I'm as prone as the next person to completely overlook the odd split infinitive. If U chooz to use groovy SMS spelling in your txt, I'll LOL with you.

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