I’m a Writer, Not a Parrot

You might be concerned that working with a ghostwriter means you book won’t sound as if you wrote it.

You don’t need to worry. You’re hiring someone who listens closely to the way you speak:
• The length of your sentences
• Whether you’re chatty or formal
• Whether specific phrases or words are important to you
• Whether your sentences flow or are more staccato
• Whether you use longer or shorter words
• Whether you use humor to communicate

From your first meetings, a good ghostwriter is already becoming attuned to your voice.

When you start working on your content, they will use that information to generate one or two pages of text. You can discuss the bits you think sound like you and the bits you don’t.

Once you nail the way you want to sound, the ghostwriter can apply it across the whole book.

One of our skills is being able to mimic other people's voices. But it’s not quite that simple.

Authors sometimes say, “You've just written down what I said.”

That’s what I want them to think, of course. But it’s not what has happened.
If I did that, it would sound like a transcript of a conversation.

I've taken what they said and rewritten it – but in a voice so close to their own that they can no longer tell what they said and what I've added.

So not quite like a parrot. Unless it's a really, REALLY smart parrot.