Erynn Lehtonen – On Ghostwriting

Hi everyone! It is time for yet another Creator’s Roulette and I am thrilled to have Erynn Lehtonen with me today – she is an author and a good friend of mine and we will be chatting about her secret life as a ghostwriter. 

Erynn, welcome to Creator’s Roulette! What made you decide to be a ghostwriter?

Ghostwriting is a bit of an odd story for me, but here goes nothing: For most of my life, I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety. That relationship with mental illness has shaped my interests, who I am, and the fact that I’m drawn to stories and writing.

I think there are lots of writers like this, but my experience is perhaps atypical in that in high school (about six years ago now) I started to realize I wouldn’t be able to function with a “normal” job.

Long story short, since I love books, and had been writing novels and stories on my own for years already, I decided to start looking for work as a writer. This was around the time the self-publishing industry was starting to boom (around 2014), and because of the heightened prospects of writing fiction, becoming a ghostwriter seemed like the obvious path for me (even if it was very difficult to pull off).

The Profession

What do ghostwriters do? Do they write sitting under a blanket? For some reason, I always imagine Casper typing on a computer when I hear ‘ghost writer’! 😀

Absolutely! When ghostwriting, my natural habitat is a foggy graveyard; you’ll usually find me beneath a white sheet with cut out eye-holes and a spooky flashlight. I always make sure to spook people with plenty of oooooohs and pop out of the ground saying boo!

In all seriousness… ghostwriters are writers, like any other writer. We write fiction, non-fiction, blogs, copy, you name it. The main difference is, unlike working on the 500-page doorstopper that I’ve been dreaming up since I was a kid, I write the 500-page doorstoppers that someone else has been dreaming up since they were a kid. For a fee.

The ghost part of this equation comes in when part of the business exchange includes a complete transfer of copyright to the person who’s paying the writer. In essence, the ghostwriter writes someone else’s story, is paid for that work by a client who purchases full publishing rights, as well as the capacity to publish that writing under their name, even if they didn’t write it.

The Dilemma that come with Ghostwriting

I have wondered about being a ghost writer but I always worry that I won’t be able to let someone else take the credit for my work. Have you felt this way? How do you deal with that?

Hmmm. I was worried about this in the beginning when writing was still a slow, painstaking process for me. Now that I can write in much higher volumes, and with better quality, letting other people take credit doesn’t bother me so much.

Of course, it depends on the book itself. There are too many people out there looking to hire smut ghostwriters, which I have shamelessly written in the past. These projects are fun and I get to exercise different writing muscles this way, but I don’t get a lot of joy out of writing them long-term, and it’s not the kind of writing I want to be associated with my author name. Similarly with romance and other popular candidates for ghostwriting.

It’s trickier when it comes to fantasy books, though, since those are my dearest love. But for the most part, I’ve learned to detach myself, in a way, from the stories that aren’t “mine”, even if I still give them the utmost care when writing and editing them. 

You are also a full-time writer, working on amazing stories, two of which I have read and reviewed. What is it like to embrace your passion for writing so thoroughly?

It’s a pretty solid mix of amazing and exhausting. There’s a common saying in the writing world which suggests that writers who wish to maintain a love for the craft shouldn’t also work as a writer (even if it’s something like technical writing, and they write fiction) because they share the same mental processes. Ultimately, a lot of people who do this are too tired after working as a writer all day to go home and work on their novels, too.

I’m not going to say that I don’t experience this, but I like to think that the thrill of being able to work on my books as much as I want overrides those moments most of the time. I could immerse myself in the world that I’ve created for a good half of the week if I wanted, at the cost of also having to expend some of my seemingly infinite writing energy for the other half. The periods of exhaustion are worth it, even if they suck when they happen.

From Ghostwriting to Writing

What are some things you have learned from ghost writing that you have taken into writing?

I’ve learned so many things I couldn’t even tell you them all. I’ve written dozens of novels while ghostwriting, and just the act of writing that many books has made me a better writer from the volume of practice.

That said, there are a few things that stand out:

#1 Ideas are cheap.

Most writers should know that few ideas are truly new. A long time ago, I used to believe that I had to protect my ideas because I had a limited amount of good ones. Of course, that’s not true at all. I have an endless stream of ideas, and I’ve come to realize that I’ll never use them all. So, some of them are put to good use in my ghostwriting projects.

What really matters is the end result. Placing more value on the idea than the execution of that idea or the act of putting those words to paper means your book will likely never get written. This is partially why ghostwriting is possible; a lot of people say they want to write a book, but then never do it (because writing is hard)! They have grand ideas but not enough skill, time, or discipline to write them. And that’s okay. Writing isn’t for everyone. But there’s still a lot of glamour associated with publishing a book.

# 2 Discipline is everything.

You can be talented at something (not just writing) and fall behind your peers because you lack the discipline to stay on track. Ghostwriting is a job for me. Writing is a job for me. Maybe I don’t quite treat it like a 9-5, but I don’t treat it like a hobby, either, or how else am I going to pay the bills?

This transferred really, really well into my personal writing projects because although I’m not held accountable by anyone but myself (and my readers) when it comes to my books, that’s enough to maintain high output and regular writing schedule which, in my opinion, is king. I refine my skills by doing, and I supplement that with plenty of extra learning materials.

# 3 Writing with outlines.

I used to write without an outline because I enjoyed the process of exploring and learning about my worlds and characters alongside them. But, ultimately, it meant messy stories that required a lot of work. Something I quickly realized was a problem when ghostwriting. Now, I won’t write without an outline, but I will help clients develop them.

There’s still a lot of creative exploration with the outlines I write. They’re detailed enough to keep me on track, but vague enough where I can let my creative instincts shine. Overall, it’s led to higher-quality books for me and my clients. 🙂

There’s a lot more, but those are the ones that define my current beliefs about writing and my own process.

On Being Discovered

Since ghostwriters cannot say which projects they worked on, how do they build their portfolio? What do you say on your resume to become an established ghostwriter?

It really comes down to establishing yourself. Lots of ghostwriters are authors too, so when someone is looking for a writer, often they can take a look at the books they have published to get an understanding of their style, genre preferences, and skill.

Without any books under your name, it’s very tough to find people who will take you seriously. When I was starting out, I didn’t have any books yet, and that’s the problem I had. The ghostwriting field is filled with people who will charge pennies, and most of the time when that happens, the writing is terrible. So without any books already to help me stand out, I had to cross my fingers and hope that people would pay a premium rate for solid writing instead of hiring someone who was charging 1/5th or even 1/10th my price because they wanted their books done cheap. (Very common) I relied on a selection of other writing samples I’d written over the years, and I ended up getting lucky and scored a few wonderful clients early on (who saw my blog, liked my writing, and reached out to me specifically) who I still work with to this day! Without that, maybe I would have had motivation to publish my own work sooner… heh.

Other than that, I imagine recommendations and word of mouth are good too, but that will depend on the client (because presumably, they’d have to reveal that their book was ghostwritten)!

This is specifically for fiction writing, since that’s what I do (I don’t like doing nonfiction very much).

Thanks for these, Erynn! Is there anything else you want to add about your experience? Anything I missed to ask?

Sure, I’ll just add one more thing. It’s weird for me, looking back at my experiences as a ghostwriter so far, because I often think that if my circumstances were different, I never would have started ghostwriting in the first place. Obviously, getting into it as early as I did meant lots of practice and skill-building for me, but it’s also taken me away from exploring the vast fantasy worlds I want to build in my own time.

So, as much as I’ve grateful for the opportunities I’ve had, I also don’t think I’m going to keep ghostwriting for much longer (or at least as consistently) so I can focus on my own stuff. Maybe you’ll be seeing a lot more books from me soon. 😉

I look forward to that! 🙂

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Everyone, you can connect with Erynn in the following ways:

Twitter

Website

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If there is anything you want to ask Erynn, please add your questions to the comments! She will be monitoring the comments! 🙂

Cover Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
Photo of pen by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash