Whats it like to work with a ghostwriter on your memoir

Whats it like to work with a ghostwriter on your memoir What's It Like to Work with a Ghostwriter? Well, Let’s Ask One Katy Weitz is an acclaimed UK ghostwriter who has worked for some of the biggest names in publishing including Harper Collins, Simon Schuster, Macmillan and Penguin Random House. In this guest post, she pulls back the curtain to reveal what the collaboration between a ghostwriter and an author  is really like.Just a few days before Christmas last year, I sent an email with the subject line - Your Book: The Full Manuscript - to my latest author Fiona. As I clicked on the send button, I actually grinned. I felt like Saint Nicholas himself, delivering to Fiona the very thing she had dreamed of for so long - her very own memoir. A few months before we had never even heard of one another and yet now, four months down the line, I knew Fiona’s life so intimately that I had been able to ‘become’ her on the page, to structure her story and create a narrative entirely from the interviews she had given me. Together, we had written a book! As always, the whole process s eemed miraculous, even to me, and I knew that Fiona (not her real name) was delighted with the result. I have been on this same journey a dozen times now, and yet it is never less than extraordinary every single time. And though the end result may be a physical thing - a book - it is the process of writing the story that is transformative. That is where the real magic happens; that is why I love what I do. Parts of a Book Explained: Front Matter, Body, and Back Matter Read post And so, with all the chapters written and amended, I put the whole lot together, including the ‘furniture’ of the book - i.e. the contents page, acknowledgments, and dedication - to create the full manuscript. Now it was time for a thorough read to check for pacing, consistency and structural issues. At this point, I can still make quite drastic changes. After all, it is the first time you are reading the book as a whole entity. It must come together in a coherent way. Have we tied up the loose ends? Are the chapters the correct length? Did we explain the background to each character? It takes a bit of time but only after I am completely satisfied will it go to my author and I get to send that wonderful email titled: Your Book: The Full Manuscript.For the author, there may be a few more steps on the road to publication but this is the moment I treasure - and those are the words I never tire of writing.If you have any experiences of working with a ghostwriter - or any questions you'd like to ask Katy - just leave a message in the comments below.