COMMENTS FOR:
“Should I hire a ghostwriter…or do the writing myself?”
A lot of people want to write a book simply to leave their mark somewhere. To the people out there, who have enough commitment to make it through even the roughest draft, I say – go for it! Do the best job you can up front – now get help editing it – and finally, publish it promptly. It’s your story and only you can tell it like it is. You’ll have a whole lot of personal satisfaction in doing it, even if it only sells a dozen copies.
– Wendy Jones
Highlander Imagine – Beyond Infinity
Duncan MacLeod must fight a South American Immortal at Teotihuacan.
Regarding the ghostwriter question, years ago a man contacted me asking if I would ghost his story. Intrigued I met with him only to find what he really wanted was for me to splice together his life story he’d written that filled an entire three-drawer filing cabinet. I got out of there as politely as I could because he didn’t want a writer, he wanted a secretary with a huge role of tape!
– Sarah Bates
COMMENTS FOR:
World’s Worst Query Letters and Book Proposals For August, 2017!
Insightful as always and funny, I too get frustrated with text abbreviations from my colleagues.
– Damien Black
Life of a Bastard
Javier Soto’s real life journey of life in foster care during the 70’s and 80’s.
Angela,
Having read several of these ‘Worse Query’ installments, I have come to the conclusion that you have a flood of foreigners responding to WritersWeekly.com
No one could possible write an inquiry that is as bad as the ones I have been reading and be a native-speaking American. You must actually get some well-written queries once in a blue moon–don’t you?
– Wendy Jones
Highlander Imagine – Beyond Infinity
Duncan MacLeod must fight a South American Immortal at Teotihuacan.
In reply to Wendy Jones.
Sure, we get lots of normal queries. But even some of the well-written ones ask to write on topics we don’t cover in WritersWeekly. These are just the absolute worst ones that jump up at us and yell “BOO!”
– Brian Whiddon – Managing Editor, WritersWeekly.com
What is a “wholesome political scenario?” Wholesome and politics, isn’t that like oil and water?
– Pamela Allegretto
Bridge of Sighs and Dreams
Nazi-occupied Rome sets the stage for Bridge of Sighs and Dreams, where the lives of two women collide in an arena of deception, greed, and sacrifice.
I have a reply for Sarah Bates who commented under ‘Ghostwriter’.
I wouldn’t consider your description of this project as negative. If your individual was willing to pay a weekly fee (upfront), you could have sent him to me, and I would have invested in a monster-roll of tape.
Once the project is going, it is amazing how clear it can become, to even the most ‘organizationally challenged’ individual, that each life-section or ‘bubble’ needed some ‘massaging’ (rewriting and connecting text). Here is where things can get interesting and in some cases, historically significant.
I don’t find it the least bit surprising that someone would initially approach writing their life story that way — section by individual section. I have dealt with people who do this a lot and have observed that many people think in ‘bubbles’ or ‘scenes’. When that bubble/scene is finished, life stops (they don’t write a logical connector) until the next thing they identify as significant happens — up comes a new ‘bubble’ and away we go again.
In the future, Sarah — please recommend all these good folks to me. We’ll get along just fine.