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

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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In 2017, 1984 will finally catch up with Australians: you WILL be watched

In 2017, 1984 will finally catch up with Australians: you WILL be watched

You’re driving along, minding your own business. As you round a corner, a police car pulls out and follows you down the road. Logic tells you that the police officers are probably heading back to the station for lunch; that their presence should make you feel safe, not nervous. You know that you have nothing to worry about because you’re driving safely and legally and your car is roadworthy. 

And yet … there is something about being followed by a police car that makes your heart rate increase just a little. Against your better judgement you feel yourself ease off the gas the tiniest amount and become that little bit more attentive to the road in front of you. Your eyes flick up to the rearview mirror more often than they need to.

Eventually the police car turns a corner, leaving you alone, and you silently chide yourself for being silly as your grip on the wheel relaxes and your back melds back into the seat.

Now, imagine the same thing happens with your communications.

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Want to be more productive? Learn to touch type

Want to be more productive? Learn to touch type

Typing is the new handwriting. Honestly – other than filling out a form, when is the last time you wrote anything substantial using a pen? When did you last send someone a handwritten letter? Most of us don’t even send Christmas cards any more, and if we do we include a typed update rather than writing inside the card.

We all type, all the time. Even if you’re not a writer, you are writing. Emails. Social media updates. Web searches. By my guesstimation, writing is now third in line as a written communication method behind typing on a keyboard and tapping on a screen. Bringing up the rear but likely to catch up before long is typing using your voice.

So, given that you spend so much time typing, have you ever learnt to touch type? You know, typing using all ten fingers and without looking at the keyboard.

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Getting past 'I'm not a writer'

Getting past 'I'm not a writer'

Earlier this month we spent a fantastic weekend at the iconic Port Fairy Folk Festival (which, by the way, is much more than banjos and tin whistles). Once again I found myself in awe of the songwriter’s ability. Never mind the music: how do these people come up with such clever lyrics? I could never do that.

Or could I?

I don’t know if I’ve shared this before, but when I was at school (when telephones still had dials and were definitely not ‘smart’) writing was not my thing. I struggled with creative writing and writing analysis and never seemed to be able to find the right formula to keep my English teachers happy. In my last few years at school, English was the subject in which I achieved my lowest grades.

These days I’m a professional writer so I’m probably not meant to tell you that.

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Going hyper over 'my sister and me'

Going hyper over 'my sister and me'

A controversy blew up in New South Wales yesterday when Luke Foley, the Labor opposition leader, told a radio station that his single mother had ‘… invested her whole life into us, my sister and me, and I owe her everything…’.

Apparently the talkback radio lines went into overload as caller after caller complained that Foley should have said ‘my sister and I’ not ‘my sister and me’.

In fact Foley was correct.

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Surprise yourself and your readers by being a little creative

Surprise yourself and your readers by being a little creative

CJ Chilvers is a photography blogger I follow who calls himself ‘A lesser photographer’. He has a refreshingly simple approach to photography which is reflected in his writing – short, sharp posts that, more often than not, stop and make you think.

A few days ago he posted with the heading ‘Surprise!’. ‘The foundation of any good story is surprise,’ he said. As he points out, ‘surprise is the only thing that makes the news’. 

In other words, it’s the surprising photographs that get attention.

This is great advice for photographers, but also for writers.

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PDF: still a great way to securely share your documents

PDF: still a great way to securely share your documents

There is a lot of talk in these and other pages about the use of the ‘ePub’ and other ebook formats formats to get your book onto the digital market. However there will be times when you don’t want to go to any trouble: you just want to share a document, ideally with some level of security to prevent it being easily duplicated.

In these cases the good old-fashioned PDF file may well be your answer. PDFs have a number of advantages for quick and easy sharing:

  • They are easy to create from any application’s ‘print’ menu.
  • They can be read on virtually any computer, tablet or smartphone, no matter the operating system, and normally without the reader having to install additional software.
  • They replicate the formatting and layout of your document, no matter what sort of device the recipient chooses to read it on.
  • While not absolutely bullet proof, they can be made secure in a number of ways.
  • They are often smaller files than their word processor equivalents.

The PDF is as close as you will get to a ‘digital photocopy’.

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Write and publish your book in a year – Step 12: Get your book out there

Write and publish your book in a year – Step 12: Get your book out there

When you finally have your book in your hot little hands, take a moment to reflect and enjoy the feeling – there’s nothing quite like it. But don’t bask in your newfound glory for too long. Now that your book is finished, it’s time to get it out to the world. This involves a combination of publicity, so people hear about your book, and distribution so that once people hear about it they are able to buy it.

Needless to say this topic could fill a book on its own; what I’m sharing here is the equivalent of the sixpence inside your Christmas pudding. 

It should also be said that while this topic is the last of my ‘write your book in a year’ series, publicity and distribution would ideally be considered before you start your project. When people ring me for advice on self-publishing, my first question is usually ‘How will you distribute it?’ simply because there’s little point writing a book unless you have the means to spread it around.

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The W-H-Y of ISBNs

The W-H-Y of ISBNs

When people write books, including ebooks, getting themselves an ISBN is often an afterthought – if they think of it at all. I thought it might be good to explain exactly what an ISBN is and why it is important.

What is an ISBN?

‘ISBN’ stands for ‘International Standard Book Number’. It is a ‘serial number’ for a book: no two books, or ebooks, published anywhere in the world will have the same ISBN. 

ISBNs are essential for maintaining order in book catalogues because they overcome the fact that both book titles and author names can be duplicated. ISBNs can also help avoid confusion when a book has multiple editions – by applying a unique ISBN to each edition, anyone searching for a specific edition will be able to identify it.

(A handy hint when comparing the price of books at online stores: to make sure you’re comparing like with like, find the ISBN of the book you’re looking for at the first store, then search on that number, rather than the title, at subsequent stores.)

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Five tips for writing numbers – to infinity and beyond

Five tips for writing numbers – to infinity and beyond

Let’s talk numbers. This is another topic that I file under the category of ‘things I always find myself having to correct when editing other people’s work’. (In case you’re wondering, two other topics in this category are the misuse of capitalsand double spacing between sentences.)

Let’s dive straight in, bearing in mind that there are few absolute rules on this topic and most of the following are really questions of style.

1. Digits or letters?

When using numbers in your writing, smaller whole numbers are generally spelt out (i.e. written as words) while larger numbers are written in digits. So ‘1’ is written as ‘one’; ‘100’ is written as 100.

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