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Ghost Writing

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Want to Improve Your Writing? Be Intentional

Years ago, I had a chance to hear one of the Philadelphia 76ers speak about how he became a professional ballplayer. Now, I couldn’t tell you who the guy was even if he walked up to me today. But one thing he said always stuck with me.

When he practiced shooting the ball, he was always intentional when he practiced. When he practiced his shooting, he didn’t screw around. He didn’t goof off, and he didn’t take shots he wouldn’t normally take. He wasn’t a sky-hook shooter, so he didn’t shoot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s famous shot. He didn’t do backward shots or trick shots. In short, every practice shot he took was a real shot.

“I don’t shoot these shots in a game, so I don’t waste my time practicing them.”

It’s the same for writing: if you want to improve your writing you have to be intentional with it. (Actually, this is true for getting good at anything, but I’m a writer, so I’ll stick with what I know.)

What does that mean? Writing is one of the most intentional activities we can do. It’s not like shooting trick shots in basketball, or going for a slow leisurely ride instead of a training ride on your bike. You’re either writing or you’re not, right?

Actually, no, you can even screw around when you’re writing. It’s in your attitude, rather than your subject matter. It’s reading when you should be writing (and no, “I’m doing research” doesn’t count). You can be just as intentional writing an email as you are a novel, or writing a comedy sketch as you are a marketing piece. It doesn’t matter where, when, or how you do it. Chris Brogan will write wherever he can find the time. And I carry my laptop and a Moleskine wherever I go.

How can you improve you writing?

When I’m writing, I always have three questions in the back of my mind.

  • Is that the best word I can use? Is this conveying the right impact, drama, or humor? Dave Barry would take hours to write a single humor column, sometimes struggling with choosing which word carried the best impact for a joke. I’ll sometimes hit Thesaurus.com to find a good word.
  • Did I set this up for the best possible impact? In humor, setup is crucial for a joke to be funny. You can have the best punchline in the world, but if you tank the setup, the whole joke fails. It’s true for every other kind of writing too. This blog post, a marketing brochure, a speech, anything. If you want to have impact, you have to set the reader up for it.
  • How can I make this better? I edit everything. Even my emails get edited before I send them out. But I’m not always looking for punctuation errors or typos. I’m looking to make sure I’m satisfied with everything I’ve written. It usually works best if I can leave something for a couple hours, overnight is even better, and a week is a rare luxury. I have even edited some of my humor blog posts six months after I published them.

To improve your writing doesn’t mean taking all kinds of classes, or writing in your very special notebook with your very special pen in your very favorite coffee shop (just don’t tell my wife that; I use it as an excuse to get out of the house sometimes). It’s a matter of focusing on the task at hand and casting an eye at how you can improve your writing. Not just the piece you’re writing, but future work you’re going to do.

Do you suck at dialog? Work on improving the dialog for the next piece you write. Then use that new level of competency as your starting point for the next time, and try to improve from that. I used to suck at dialog, so I worked on it for months and even years. Now, unfortunately, my narration and scene description are less-than-acceptable, and I have to really focus on those.

But by writing my narration with my three questions, I’ll be able to improve my descriptions, so I can spend less time writing and more time sitting on a beach, drinking little umbrella drinks, served by. . . some kind of. . . woman wearing a dress that she bought at one of those. . . dress selling places.

Dammit!

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Making the Argument for Ghost Blogging. Yet Again.

My good friend Lindsay Manfredi and I were both interviewed about ghost blogging last week, and asked whether we thought it carried any ethical dilemmas.

The answer is no, it doesn’t. Not if it’s done correctly.

I’ve talked about ghost blogging before, and said if it follows a few basic procedures, it’s as ethical as, say, public relations. (Er, on second thought. . . )

Yet, the issue keeps getting brought up, as if we’re committing some unpardonable ethical sin, like medical testing on baby seals. But the only people who seem to care are social media purists and “social media ninjas” who talk about transparency, yet work in industries where their efforts, if done correctly, are anonymous and behind the scenes as well.

Ghostwriting = copywriting

Anyone who does freelance copywriting can tell you that their name doesn’t go on squat when it comes to their efforts. Sales brochures, web copy, sales letters, speeches, you name it, the writer’s name is not-so-noticeably absent from the final copy. And that’s fine. That’s the life we choose.

Marketing agencies don’t get their names on their clients’ campaigns. No one whines that “my name isn’t on that sales brochure I wrote” or “my name isn’t in the newspaper article I sent the press release about.” Frankly, if you’re worried about getting credit for your work, you’re in the wrong business. If you want a byline, be a journalist.

Maintaining Ethical Boundaries for Ghost Blogging

A good ghost has procedures they follow with their clients:

  1. I interview the client, who tells me — in his own words — his thoughts about their industry-specific issues.
  2. I transcribe the interview and clean it up, turning it into 350 – 450 words of clear, informative copy.
  3. The client approves the article.
  4. I publish the article on their blog.

It’s the clients thoughts, the client’s words. I just transcribe it. Or as we like to say, “we do the work so you can go to your meetings.”

How is this any different from the CEO’s letter at the front of the company’s annual report? Or a politician’s speech to her constituents? Or the catalog copy that was supposedly written by the company’s founder? How is it any different from a PR flak’s press release that becomes the basis for a news article? (I say this as a former flak whose press releases were often turned into “Staff Wire Reports” by one county newspaper.)

Answer: It isn’t. Not a bit. They are exactly the same thing. (In fact, Jason Falls says that we’re not ghostwriters, we’re copywriters, and that it’s okay.)

These are the same steps that every other copywriter, speechwriter, and marketing director in the world follows when they produce work for a client. This has been an acceptable practice since well before Judson Welliver ghosted for Warren G. Harding, thus becoming the first presidential speechwriter.

The only place ghostwriting isn’t acceptable is journalism and academia, as it should be. Your merit is based on the work you produce; in business, it’s based on the results you achieve. (Although academia seems to have some of its own ghostwriting issues.)

So if you are against ghost blogging, you need to be against all ghostwriting. You need to speak out against speechwriters for politicians. You need to put an end to all freelance copywriting. You need to stop sending out press releases that don’t include your name as a quoted source.

Otherwise, it’s a non-issue. The people who hire me are the ones I’m concerned with. The social media purists? Well, you just give me something to blog about, thus boosting my own search engine rankings.

So, thanks for that.