(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
I came close to firing a client yesterday. It’s been a rocky relationship from the beginning, which was back in the beginning of February.

I’ve been ghostwriting for a number of years, and I have a rough process I’ve found usually works. It goes more or less like this:

1. First we do a Visioning which I do on an individual basis for ghostwriting clients.
2. Next I help the client create a 10 Word Purpose for their book.
3. We follow this with a Working Table of contents.

Once these three elements are in place, the ghostwriting usually goes fairly well. I should have stopped when the client couldn’t come up with a working table of contents, or even a simple list of topics to be covered. I didn’t. The client asked for more time to work this out. Eventually we went to weekly phone calls where I acted, come to think of it, as sort of a counselor, and the client in turn tried to counsel me.

Yesterday, in a not very pretty conversation, I laid down the law. The client has a week to decide if they want to work with me; if they do we need to lay out a specific plan that will result in progress. In this case, I define progress as words on paper. If they want to fire me, I’ll support them finding the right writer for their book.

I’m now wondering if I should let this ride even another week. Ah, it won’t hurt, and who knows, maybe a miracle will happen. I’ll let you know. But I promise you, if, next week, I’m not totally convinced I can get the info I need to write the book the client will be happy with, I’m on to the next client.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

I seem to be referring to Joe Wikert’s blog a lot - but he keeps pointing to things I wouldn’t find on my own, like: The Life of a Ghostwriter. That post in turn points to an article in the New York Times by fellow ghostwriter Christine Larson called: Expressing Passions (Just Not Your Own)

The article, which is definitely worth a read if you’re at all interested in ghostwriting, talks, among other things, about how some of her friends and acquaintances seem to disapprove of the fact she earns her living ghostwriting. You know what? I often experience the same thing.

It’s surprising to me how many people don’t know what a ghostwriter is - someone who writes a book or other work on behalf of someone else who pays the ghost and gets credit for the work. Then, as Christine well knows, many of them turn up their nose in some fashion or another.

So I thought I’d ask you - fellow freelance writers, etc., to tell me exactly what you think about ghostwriting.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

I’ve got a client who is doing a series of fairly short videos full of management tips, techniques, etc. They are used in her organization and we’re using them as the basis of a book. If we do this right, we’ll have two products to sell - the book and the video set.

Writing from videos, however, isn’t a cinch. Although it can help to see her talk and hear her voice, and she’s pretty good about leaving out all the umms and ahhhs and yaknows so many people use in speech, the spoken word is still a long way from the written word. It can get tedious either transcribing (I usually require clients to pay someone else for transcription and deliver me the word files) or just going over the video a number of times to capture what’s going on.

Up to now I’ve only used author videos as a way to get an overview of the book I’m to ghostwrite, and most often on dvd. These are being sent to me via email. I got three earlier this week and watched the first two, which, it turned out I had already seen. I didn’t think to check the third one, which was new until today, when I wanted to use it to write from. Of course, it won’t load.

The client’s IT department will get me fixed up I’m sure, but it is a bit of a hassle. Of course, I do have other things to write.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

How are you doing on the goals or the vision you set for yourself this year? You did set some, I assume, becuase most of us seem to. I actually believe in Visioning and goal work; I wrote about it at the end of last year in a post called: Sneaking Up on 2008 - Goals for Freelance Writers

For reasons that are totally obscure for me, I didn’t share my goals with you. I just dug them up, and, with some editing, here they are:

• Stay quit from nicotine
• Lose a pound a week which would put at around 120, yes I’m up to 172 at the moment (blush)
• Exercise at least 3 x a week
• Do a 5k walk with kids, maybe two
• Get the how to write a book class launched, which means the first go round of the book.
• Get the links fixed everywhere on my sites
• Finish Dr. XXX’s book
• Two or three more books at roughly $??? each

And you know what, I’m still nicotine free… I’m finally beginning to slowly lose some weight and I really am working out three times a week or more.

I haven’t done a 5k yet, but probably will in the next 60-90 days. I haven’t launched the class on book writing yet, but I am making progress on the book.

I’ve just started working on the broken links… 90 days?

Dr. XXX’s book isn’t finished, but progressing nicely.

I have contracted for one additional book at a nice fee and suspect at least one more will wander in before long.

I’ve also begun working on residual income and will be setting some firm goals in the next month or so, maybe sooner.

So, how are you doing with your goals this year? What’s worked? What hasn’t? What’s been added or subtracted.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

A few days ago told you about a ghostwriting client who broke several telephone appointments and then requested a Saturday appointment even though I normally don’t work weekends. I asked you what you would do.

Most who responded felt there was no need to meet the client on the weekend, although one said they would if it was a well paying client and another felt I should be willing to make a Saturday appointment.

Here’s what I actually did and the result:

1. I sent a brief email saying, nicely, that I don’t work weekends and that I’d lost track of her schedule, but was pretty open the following week.
2. She wrote back asking if, instead of delaying our talk to the following week, she could call me early Thursday morning.
3. I responded, again nicely, that I could make Thursday work. I then pointed out that she’d had a lot going on that resulted in two broken appointments and that when we set an appointment I actually set aside the time and did some prep work, so I wanted to be reasonably sure she could keep the new one she was suggesting.
4. It felt like there was a pause, and then she responded with thanks that I’d held her accountable and assuring me she’d keep the appointment this time.
5. She did and we made real progress on the ghostwriting project.

There’s some sort of balance between being flexible and letting a client walk all over you. It’s not always easy to know exactly what to do when a writing client starts getting flaky or demanding. My personal trick is to simply get quiet for a few moments, asking internally what I should do, how I should respond. Usually it works out reasonably well.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

I’m going through one of those periods that astrologers lay off to mars in retrograde… lots of smallish things going wrong, and a couple of larger ones too. I won’t go into all the details, but I’m also having trouble with a clients, and I’d like your advice.

The first is a smallish contract for a book proposal. The client wants me to create a sample chapter and the rest of the sales pitch so she can circulate it to agents and/or publishers. We get along well, have had several phone appointments and are, I think (and she’s so indicated) closing in on her really quite unique style. In the last few days, she’s broken two, maybe three telephone appointments. She’s had a good reason, for each, but… and when I suggested a particular time on Friday she asked if instead I could meet with her on Saturday.

The question: Would you work on Saturday in this situation even though you normally don’t? Why? And if you didn’t, what would you tell the client.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

Most of the folks I ghostwrite for are professionals of one sort or another, and they are busy people. But then, so am I - both professional and busy. And I suspect most of you are too, or working to become so.

I bring this up because once again a major client of mine has changed a phone appointment. True, she only pushed it back some 30 minutes, but it’s a pattern, and the chances are she’ll be late for the new time too.

Although I’ve been accommodating, this time I pushed back. I agreed to the new time, but stated when the appointment would end. I let that ride when we set the original time, and shouldn’t have. I told myself the reason I hadn’t spoken it out loud when we originally set this up is it had been such a struggle to get any time and I was so relieved we were going to try it by phone before flying me half way across the country.

Sigh. I love this client and I love the book we’re doing, but it isn’t my book - it’s the client’s. I’m more than holding my end up and now it’s time for the client to do the same thing. I can be flexible without being run over… remind me of this from time-to-time, will you?

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

1. You schedule phone meeting with a client that’s to last at least an hour.
2. You make sure nothing interferes, including putting off at least one other client.
3. The appointment is confirmed the day before.
4. The hour arrives and there’s no phone call.
5. 25 minutes past the start of the call, you call the client’s assistant…

Every now and again I run into a ghostwriting client who may actually be too busy to do what’s necessary to get a book written. Well, that’s not exactly what I mean. In this case I know the client wants it done… but we may be facing a place where he has to turn what would normally be his part - reading and commenting on draft chapters - over to an assistant.

Of course, the problem with this approach is that the client will want to read the book by the time the assistant and I get to the end of it, or at least will before it’s printed, and that will mean a lot of changes that could have been avoided if I could have gotten to the client during the writing.

Another solution may be for me to travel to the client (at the client’s expense of course) and get face-to-face. Sometimes, if you’re right there, a busy client will find a way to sit down with you, at least several times during a day.

There are probably other ways to work that out… ideas would be appreciated!

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

How do you actually get your writing work done on any given day. I realized I’m not sure how I do it, so I thought I’d chronicle at least part of it here.

I need to generate a new chapter for a client. We know what it’s going to be about and the point, but the details are missing. Since the book is really an allegory, it’s the story I have to create, or the next phase of the story.

• I started right at 9 by re-reading the notes I’d taken when my client and I talked last week.
• I played the Bumble Bee game over at Orisinal for about 3 minutes.
• I wrote about 300 words setting up the situation - which took about 15 minutes.
• The various scenes or chunks of this story seem to be taking about 15 minutes each to draft… I draft one and need to pace around a bit, or come over here and blog about it… some thinking time is needed to move to the next chunk.
• Then I got interrupted because I found out I’d gotten a bad link in an email - that took about 12 minutes to sort out.

Whew! Just over 1,000 words in almost an hour and a half. Not bad, for draft material. Now I’m going to take a break with a bit of gardening.

How do you actually get something written?

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

I was poking around our Business Channel when I ran into WorkBoxers post called: Who Holds Rights To Commissioned Designs?

Mark strongly suggests designers make sure ownership rights for designs are spelled out in contracts. I do exactly the same thing in ghostwriting contracts. I make sure that my clients retain all the rights unless, for some reason, we decide to do something differently. As a ghost I don’t want the rights to someone else’s ideas, even if I am the one who put them down in writing.

How do you protect yourself and your clients?

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.