11-20-04 @ 10:31 am EST

I came across an item today in which a user offered their writing services for money. They offered to write practically anything, excluding certain genres like erotica and horror--essays, poetry, fiction, articles, etc. They had a whole page devoted to touting their services for a monetary fee and proclaiming how good they are at what they do. They offer to turn over all rights to the item to the person requesting it. In effect, acting as a ghostwriter.

I suppose ghostwriting is good for the people who want to use it--which nowadays is mostly famous people, I would guess, because who else has a story to tell and isn't good at telling it? But to me, ghostwriting is something I'll just never understand. Aside from the usage of a ghostwriter in the case of celebrities--people who the public WANTS to hear from, and who may not always have the best writing skills--the thought is just so foreign to me that I can't comprehend it. Who would WANT to use a ghostwriter for any other purpose, like what this person is describing? Doesn't it defeat the entire purpose of writing?

I'm guessing that if somebody makes use of this person's services, they are somebody who has been trying out writing for a while, since this is a writing website and what else would they be doing here, looking for a ghostwriter? That means that they will eventually have to produce more than the one article or story they would have this person produce. Unless they expect to have this person on call for the rest of their career, what good would it do to have this person write them an item? Somewhere along the line they will have to prove their writing mettle, and having somebody else do it for you all the time just won't cut it.

And that's just the technical side of things. The practical side. What about the artistic side? In my case, at least, and I'm willing to bet in a lot of other cases, people write because they WANT to. Why else would we do this?--it's not like it pays well for most people, it's humiliating and discouraging (rejection after rejection--I haven't even bothered trying), and chances are you will never have the audience you desire. You pretty much have to WANT to write in order for this to make any sense whatsoever. And despite all my bitching about not having readers and bla bla bla, I keep writing anyway. I can't say it makes any sense, considering I'm never going to be published and people don't want to read it anyway! So I'd BETTER want to be doing it, in order for me to not be completely crazy. If I did not want to write, I may as well spend my time tearing up paper into little strips; I'd be making just about as much use of my time.

The fact is, I LOVE writing, putting words down on a page and having them make sense, and at least entertain me, and maybe the occasional other person. Several weeks back I was proofing something and I just stopped to look at the screen and not even bother reading what any of it said. And...for the first time in my life, I found it hard to believe that *I* had strung all those words, all those sentences, all those paragraphs together. *I* had done all that, and not just in that one item, but in dozens of others. I've produced MEGABYTES of writing. That may sound like nothing, and I'm certainly not bragging about it--but that meant I had actually sat down at this computer and typed and typed and thought and imagined and came up with all this stuff, and put it into words, and translated that onto the screen and into coherent (well, I hope) stories. I'm certainly not the first nor the best person who's ever done this, but lots of people don't. For the first time I think I slightly understood what people meant whenever they said they were impressed that I could do something like that. (Then the feeling quickly slipped away and I went back to proofing.)

A great part of the joy of writing comes from the fact that you know YOU did it YOURSELF. What would all of this mean if I paid somebody else to do it for me, no matter how well they did it? What would be the point of paying somebody to write something under my name? The entire POINT of writing, to me, is the writing itself, so to pay somebody else to do it would be like...I can't really think of an adequate simile. Like paying somebody else to go on a trip to Mackinac Island for me, perhaps. The whole joy is in GOING there! If I were to consider paying somebody to do it, then I may as well just keep my money for something better! It would be a waste!

Have you seen the car commercial yet where the couple drive up to the top of the mountain in their SUV, take a photo of the view, and drive back down to the tour bus where the old woman is waiting? They hand her her camera, and she hurries back to the bus. I found this commercial utterly stupid. The whole POINT of that tour up there was to see the mountain, or whatever, and she had somebody ELSE do it for her. "Here, take a picture of the view." What's the point if you don't see the view for yourself? You may as well just save the money you would have spent on that tour, and buy a book of photographs of mountains instead. It's the same thing. A vicarious thrill. If you're going to experience something through somebody else, at least be frugal or sensible about it. I'm hardly going to pay for a ferry ride to the island if I'm then going to send somebody ELSE to take all the pictures.

That's the feeling I get when thinking about ghostwriting. I may as well pay somebody to eat my food for me, or drink my tea, or watch my favorite TV shows. If somebody were to write my writing then it would take away the whole point of the activity, so why would I bother having them do it in the first place? As I said, I can think of much better and easier ways to waste my time, without having to spend any money!

What pride can you take in showing off your writing, which was penned by someone else?

What pride can you take in knowing that YOU are not the one who sat there, and thought it all up, and typed it all out, and strung all those words into sentences and paragraphs and stories?

What joy or pleasure did you get out of it, not having done anything at all?

What was there to even experience?

I just don't understand. Unless someone is in it solely for the money (and I already stated a difficulty one can face if they hope to make a career out of writing, without doing any of the work themselves), I cannot comprehend what the point is in hiring a ghostwriter to do anything for you. Why not find another pastime? Hiring a ghostwriter, if you're not in it for the money, is like...sending somebody off to take your vacation for you. Utterly pointless.

And an awful waste.

This is why ghostwriting is such a foreign concept to me, beyond my understanding. I guess some things I will never understand.

This doesn't take into account the practicality of having somebody else fill in for you when you have your own style and expectations. For as much as this user touted their expertise in spelling and grammar and such...I found some very basic grammatical and spelling errors all throughout their item. I would have commented to tell them this, had the item allowed anonymous comments. (What can I say, I've had my share of angry respondents, I'm not tacking my name on anymore!) The fact that it didn't allow ratings kind of tells me something, so I just browsed on elsewhere. IMO you should really not be touting your expert services as a ghostwriter and editor if you do not have a complete (or as nearly complete as possible, we all make mistakes) grasp of the language. This person is a foreigner, so I could and would forgive those mistakes in their own writing--if they had not been offering their services as a ghostwriter. The fact that they are just leaves me leery. Why would I want somebody ghostwriting something for me--even IF I wanted that--if they do not understand the language the way I do? (And if they don't even NOTICE they don't understand it?)

This is one reason (that, and a lack of availability--people won't even read my stories for pleasure!) that I do not have others proof my own works. I may be too close to my writing sometimes to catch certain mistakes, but I know that *I* am the best judge of at least the small technical details, spelling, grammar, how I want a sentence phrased, etc. Never mind the horror of having somebody else try to portray my characters and describe my settings! I am the only one who phrases things the exact way I do, and I am the only one who knows what I am looking for, both when writing, and when proofing. If you want something done right, do it yourself. A different person can offer me the best perspective from a reader's point of view--and can catch plotting and consistency errors I would never see--but when it comes down to the technical details and the writing itself, I am the best judge of what I've done. Everything else is just opinion.

I once had my dad outline a poster I'd made in marker because I found it tedious. When it was done, the lines were so wavy and jiggly that I was disappointed in what had started out as my carefully created poster. You see? I would have been much happier had I just done the job myself, no matter how tedious it might have been. The end result would have been worth the trouble. Same with writing, a million times over.

Why let somebody with even less of a grasp of the language than I have proof my work, much less write any of it? I am the only one who knows what I'm looking to do, what I'm hoping to achieve when I get on the computer and open up Wordpad and start typing every day, and there is no way some other person, no matter HOW good their English skills might be (and in this case, they are less than adequate), could do what I'm hoping to do with nearly enough success. In the end, there are writers who are better than me, who are more interesting than me, who will draw in tons more readers than me, and who I will even be jealous of...but there is only one writer who is ME. And having somebody else do my "job" for me not only doesn't make sense, but it sounds like a plain old bad idea. There could only end up being disappointment all around.

I may be dull and boring and make mistakes, but at least I'm the one doing them. Hopefully I'm learning from them, though I can't really say. But at least I can sit and enjoy writing something, even if nobody else cares about it, and there is nobody else who can do that for me. I may as well ask somebody else to do my breathing for me.

Best of luck to that user and their ghostwriting efforts, but I'm hoping that most of the people on this site are serious enough about writing to forego the offer and do the task on their own. If not, then why are they even here?

I guess it's time to end and post this. Too bad hardly anyone will even see it, I like to think I maybe made a good point here. But then again I'm the only judge of that, and it's not like I'm unbiased. :/