Significant Others - Hilary Liftin on the Art of Ghostwriting

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Amelia Earhart’s husband George Putnam didn’t invent ghostwriting, but he relied on it heavily to produce his best-sellers. What kind of job is ghostwriting today?

Welcome to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in yesterday's episode, we learned about how Amelia Earhart's husband, George Palmer Putnam, may have single-handedly caused the ghostwriting market to explode. Here to tell us more about what it's like to work as a writer for hire is author Hilary Lifton. Hilary, it's so nice of you to do this. Thank you for being here. I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. So you are a professional ghostwriter. Is that the proper term? Correct. If we wanted to be formal about it, we would say collaborator, but collaborator is not as sexy a title. So I just go with ghostwriter. Well, I don't know that it's not sexy. I would just say it's less specific because collaborator can apply to so many things. That's right. So if, yeah, if I'm at a dinner party and I say I'm a ghostwriter, people get an idea of what I do,

even though it isn't always in the shadows. How often do you find yourself talking about what you do? You know, you'd be surprised. People, I think people are curious about ghostwriting just because they're aware, the books that are ghosted, it's a huge number of the books that are out there. And so people are aware that it's happening, but they feel like it's a secret that, and that, you know, there's something they don't know about it that they want to know's a secret that and that, you know, there's some something they don't know about it that they want to know. I'm not sure that's true. But but I think, yeah, I end up talking about it a lot. I wonder if part of the fascination, because part of the fascination for me is not so much the job itself, which seems like it can be fairly straightforward or not that, you know, mysterious anyway. But the fact that, for example, if you

take a book like Open, the Andre Agassi autobiography, which was famously ghostwritten by J.R. Moringer, who also wrote The Hairy Prince of England. I was going to say, I don't know what his last name is. Windsor, I guess. I don't know. He wrote that as well. and I really enjoyed it. And my feeling of affection for the writing transferred directly onto Agassiz, which is so odd because he did not write it, very transparently did not write it. And that's such an unusual transaction. I don't know if there's anything else culturally that is analogous. I mean, one analogy I would give you that I think is maybe a little oversimplified is if somebody comes, if you hired an interior designer

to work on your house or a stylist to help you dress and somebody came into your house and said, oh, I love your house, you wouldn't feel like it wasn't your house. You'd feel like this represents me, it represents my taste. I live in it every day. I have much more right to it than anyone who helped me make those choices. And so, you know, there's a way in which a ghost written book should be so faithful to the subject and so true to the way they talk about themselves that your affection is not misplaced, I don't think. And if it is, then something's gone wrong in the process because

it should be so true to the author. And when I work with a client I always say to them by the end of this process you should feel like it's you you wrote that you wrote that book because it's because it's your voice and it's what happened to you and I came in and and you'd never written a book before so it would have been hard for you to stare at an empty page but you are able to talk about what happened to you and what was meaningful. And together we develop it. So it's a true collaboration that isn't a deception. That's fascinating. So what is, I'm thinking about how in this story about Amelia Earhart's husband, George Palmer Putnam, who really leaned very heavily into employing ghostwriters in a way that I think was rather novel for his era anyway. As you say, now I think the statistic is something like most publishing houses admit that something like 75% of all the sales are at the hands of ghostwritten books. It's kind of amazing. Which is kind of amazing. And he, one of the other distinguishing

characteristics of Putnam was that he was very, very impatient and he sort of wanted to cater to the public's fascination with, you know, an event or a moment in the culture immediately. And so, for example, with Lindbergh's record-breaking flight across the Atlantic, the ghostwriter who Putnam hired essentially wrote the book in 11 days of the entire journey. And then Lindbergh pushed back on that and wrote it himself and did it in three weeks, which was very slow, according to Putnam. But I'm curious what the scope of your process generally looks like, or is it all over the map? Well, I've definitely never done a book in 10 days, I'll tell you that. But what's interesting about that is, yes, I mean, I think Putnam was definitely breaking new ground when he had this idea that you could capitalize on a media sensation right away.

And probably ever since that's what publishers have been trying to do. I've never written anything that quickly, but a rush book for me would be three to four months from start to finish, which is fast. And the other thing I would say about it is I work with people who are often really smart and probably capable of writing a book if they weren't extremely successful and busy. So if you took them out of their lives and locked them in a cabin for two years, they could teach themselves how to write a book. They could get a lot of it on paper. They could hand it into an editor and the editor could polish it up and publish it. But nobody wants, they don't want to do that. And nobody wants to wait. So they bring in somebody who can help speed things up. So in a four month

period, that means working pretty fast, interviewing and writing at the same time. You know, I love to have more time, but there is kind of a thrill of a rush book too. And, you know, everyone, everyone I think is more responsive to a deadline. So, you know, everyone, everyone, I think, is more responsive to a deadline. So, you know, you're going to fill up the space you're given. So it can be done in four months. Because if you think about any person's life, you know, if you start if you sat down with somebody and started to tell them your whole life story or all the highlights. In the beginning, you'd think, oh, we're going to be here for a year. And then 20 hours later, you'd be saying, okay, I mean, I don't know what else I really have to say, right?

We just, and there are some people who, you know, if you talk to a movie star who's been successful for 50 years, there's a lot to cover. been successful for 50 years. There's a lot to cover. But anyone who's doing a crash book probably has a single event for which they're famous or a single moment in time. And that's the center of what you're talking about. And then you're going to kind of build to that. So you can, I mean, 20 hours of interviewing will get you pretty far. So to some degree, is your job to like midwife the story out of a person? Yeah, that's a great verb for it. If that's a verb.

Because it is their baby. It's their baby. And by the time it's published and out in the world, I get to disappear, which I enjoy. and out in the world, I get to disappear, which I enjoy. The publicizing of the book is, you know, not something I'm interested in. I get to dwell in the, just in the writing part, which is, you know, my favorite part of it. How many books have you ghostwritten? I don't know off the top of my head, but definitely over 20. Wow. And is the subject like a wide range or do you tend to have a certain thing you like to do? I've done a range of books and I enjoy that. I've done celebrity memoirs, but I've also done

books that are more in the inspirational, I guess, self-help space. And then I've done book doctoring, which is when somebody does a lot of the writing themselves, but needs a coach or needs help shaping it. How tricky is that? I mean, again, I go back to the house analogy because I say to those clients, it's easier when you have somebody renovate your house and they always come in and they say, actually, it'd to explain to them why things need to change as opposed to just structuring it in the first place. So here's why this sentence needs to move to this other paragraph, you know, and that's kind of really in the weeds sometimes. Yeah, then you're a writing teacher for someone who's not even a writer. Correct. Which, I mean, it's part of the experience for them that I don't, that I like them to have. You know, I think I want them to enjoy the romance of writing a book. have, when people are famous or well-known for something, they have to be careful about what they say. And when they're writing a book, often for the first time, they don't have to censor themselves or talk in soundbites and be really careful because they actually

have ownership of their own words for the, sometimes the first time so it's very liberating for my celebrity clients so you're contracted by the subject you're not contract again to refer back to george pottenham he was a publisher and he would hire i'm sure he was doing all sorts of things that analogous to the old studio system are now like completely verboten. But, you know, he would contract with the subject to publish the book and then he would also hire the writer. So the writer was basically working for him. So but it sounds like you have a relationship directly with with the subject of the book and then their relationship with the publisher is separate. Yes, that's how it works 90% of the

time. Occasionally the publisher will hire me, but I think it's cleaner for everybody, especially for the publisher, if we are the author and they are the publisher. I see. Is there a story or type of story that you're particularly proud of having worked on? Many. I mean, there's a book that I did where I only had 10 hours with my client. Wow. That was a bestseller. So you knew going in you had a limited amount of time and so you maxed out the question asking? Yeah and it was a book that was true to that person but also didn't I didn't pad it I

didn't want filler I just you know luckily that client spoke really quickly and we got a lot done. And then I've also had a project where my author, it was a nonfiction work, not a memoir. And the author couldn't really get it to a place where the publisher was happy, the editor was happy. And we had to rewrite it three times. And at that point, he's frustrated, I'm frustrated. And at that point, he's frustrated. I'm frustrated. But the challenge there for me that I enjoy is we respect our editor. We know the editors are really smart person and we're trying to do, then a lot of other people won't. And we just have to keep trying. And so I liked that because it was a challenge. You know, it was a challenge to get my author from a place where the editor wasn't connecting to a place where the editor was. And you did. Yeah, and we did. And again, a bestseller. Oh my gosh, congratulations. So not always easy. No, I wouldn't imagine it's

ever easy, actually. How does your visibility work? Is it variable? Is it again, we all know that Moringer wrote the books that he's talked about writing. I'm sure he's written other ones that he doesn't talk about. But is that something that's, you know, decided in each contract? Is that something that's up to the subject? get credit on the cover. You can get credit on the title page. You can get acknowledged in the acknowledgements or you can be invisible. I always say, and it's true that I'm not trying to be famous. So I don't care about being on the cover. And I think another name on the cover of the book, on the jacket of the book, clutters it up. I like to be acknowledged on the title page because I like people in the industry to know that I was involved. And I had one author who had several bestsellers. I was always on the title page. And I asked her if anyone had ever asked her a single question about that other name that was on her book. And she said, no. And I said,

that's perfect. That's exactly how we want it to be. It's not interesting. It shouldn't be. I mean, it's interesting enough for us to talk about it here. But if you're reading a book, the help that the author had should be kind of irrelevant. I mean, the editor doesn't usually get credited other than on the acknowledgement page. Other ghosts, I have a lot of ghost friends. And other people feel really differently about that. They sort of feel the same way you would in a TV show or a movie where everyone who worked in it gets a credit at the end. You see them scroll by and, you know, why should it be any different? a credit at the end. You see them scroll by and, you know, why should it be any different?

But I don't feel that way. I'm not in it for my ego and I don't want to distract from the book. So yeah, I'm happy with that and I'm fine being in the shadows. I don't really love it when they want me to be completely invisible, because then it feels like we're making ghostwriting into something shameful when it shouldn't be. Why, you know, why would somebody who spent their life working on some other skill be expected to be able to write a book when the time came. So I think the reason I like to get credit is so that people understand that ghostwriting is a legitimate endeavor and that there's nothing wrong with saying you had to help. Right. saying you had to help. Right. How did you come to this profession? What was your path?

I worked in book publishing for a decade and I wasn't planning to be a writer, mostly because I didn't know that I would ever be able to support myself as a writer. And then I moved to LA. I was pregnant. I was, my husband was working here. I didn't, there's no publishing in LA. I didn't know what I was going to do. And I'd already published a couple books that memoir-ish books. So I had an agent and my agent started, you know, asked me to do a rewrite on a book. And I enjoyed that. And then she said, I'll put you up to ghostwrite a book, but I can't really fight for you because you have no experience. And I kind of lucked out. That was an A-list actor who asked the candidates to write a chapter in her voice over the weekend without talking to her. Oh, my goodness. So there were only three people up for the job. One of them said they weren't going to do that.

The other one, I don't know, I think the other one was a man and I was a woman. And then I also just said to my husband, you know, these are experienced ghosts. There's no way they're going to spend as much time as I'm going to spend this weekend working on this. And so I got that job and then I had a credit and I just loved doing it. I loved it because it had all the elements of writing that I enjoy. It was sort of like, I didn't have to do any research. It's collaborative. So you get to be with another person. I never really wanted to just sit at home alone with ideas coming to me somehow from the sky. So you're given this kind of dump of material. A lot of times it's juicy. It's like being in People magazine, you know,

the pages. So you're getting these great stories. And then you're part therapist, part editor, part puzzle master. You know, it's sort of like this jigsaw puzzle that's given to you. You have all the pieces, but you have to figure out how they fit together. And I just loved that process. And I love talking to somebody about their life and seeing themes emerge in somebody's life. And that's sort of that's how it's really like therapy and therapy. You're making you're writing the story of your life so that you understand yourself. understand yourself. And when you're writing a book, you're figuring out the points of your life so that other people understand you. So that process is really fun. Have you ever had anyone you've worked with tell you that the process was therapeutic for them,

that they had a better understanding of themselves or their journey after doing the work? Every time. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's amazing. It's because you're in it together. You really are. Maybe it's not true every time, but a lot.

What a fascinating exercise, too, as a form of therapy for someone to, even if it's never going to be published because they're not known, if someone were to work with a person to just write down their life story and have it filtered through the lens of a person who knows how to tell a story, it's a really interesting new modality we've just invented. Yes. The difference is that when you publish a book, you are protecting yourself a little bit, right? So you don't, maybe don't want to tell everything. But what I say to my authors when we're talking is, let's just tell me and we'll figure out if it goes in the book. So it allows them to kind of

at least know, admit to the whole story so they're not carrying that weight anymore, right? It is, you know, kind of healing in that way. But then afterward, they can go back and say, okay, that was, I don't want to say that even though it's not on brand or whatever it is. I'm just thinking about voice as a writer. And you mentioned that this person who sort of set you up for your first tryout was specific also about auditioning in a voice. And I'm wondering, is there a distinct voice for each of the books that you write? And how difficult is it to come to that? I mean, it's difficult enough as a writer to find a voice for a piece, you know, period, end of story. Then to have it, and I don't know if it's actually harder or easier for it to have to align with the persona of a person who exists in the world.

What is that process like? So when we talk, you know, we have a voice that our friends recognize. And then if you really just took the way you speak and put it on paper, it wouldn't sound great. It's just that we convey so much humor, emotion. We connect with people when we're talking in a way that has to be kind of translated to the page. So there's no magic trick to doing that. I mean, the way I think I do it is by spending a lot of time with a person, using the way they phrase things a lot and trying to create a voice for them on paper that feels true to who they are in the world.

So you're a little bit chat GPT. Yeah, exactly. Collecting the voice cues. Yeah. And if and then and then it's part of the process, too. So in the very beginning of a project, you know, I'll draft something and say, is this sounding like you? And I give it to them. And if you read something that was supposed to be you, you know exactly, you know right away what doesn't sound like you.

So that's a really important part of the process, which is here it is on paper. Fix it. You know, oh, I would never say that, or I would never say it like that, or this isn't what I meant. So it's really important for me to make clear to them that nothing has been written in stone. And, you know, sometimes they want me to make them funnier and smarter than they are. You know, the number of people who say, I want to sound like David Sedaris is kind of amazing. And, you know, I always say to them, if I wrote like David Sedaris, I would be David. I mean, I would be David Sedaris. I would I wouldn't I wouldn't be

ghostwriting. Right. I mean, and if and if you sounded like David Sedaris, you also would be in a different position. So if David Sedaris were a ghostwriter, everyone would sound like David Sedaris. I mean, I think that I have a very, you know, there's something ghost-like about me. Sorry, I'm just, as someone who knows you in real life, I would not say there's something ghost-like about you. I'd just float into a room. Please explain. No, but I think I noticed that even when I'm just socializing with people, I kind of want to connect. And when you want to connect with somebody, you kind of, everyone does it a little bit socially.

You find what you have in common and you kind of lean into that in your conversation. So you're looking for common into that in your conversation. So you're looking for common ground just generally in conversation. And as a ghost, I have a lot of empathy. So my husband always says that I drink the Kool-Aid of my authors. I'll come home and say, this person's so amazing what they've been through and the way they process it. You know, I'm really on their team and I'm feeling their feelings and I'm, you know, really engaged in, you know, putting myself in their shoes. And so that's a big piece of creating the voice and staying in the voice.

Has there ever been someone you had to decline because you didn't feel you would be able to have that level of enmeshment or blending or whatever it is? Yeah. I mean, I say no to projects often when I just, there's no connection. And I've been pretty lucky in being able to connect with my authors. I think if you spend enough time talking to somebody and they're really being honest with you, you end up liking them. That's interesting. And, but I, I mean, I had one client who just kind of had a wall up and I never really broke through a perfectly nice person, but who didn't have sort of a, a deep way of looking at things. So even when they told a story, there was no story to the story. You'd say, oh, what is your sister like? And they'd say, she's the nicest person. And there's just nothing there. And so this was a person who'd had a very interesting life, but, but didn't see it in color. And I did the best I

could, you know, and I, and I think that the client was happy with the book, but I didn't think there was much to it in the end. Have your subjects been male, female, all sorts of different people? Yes. Yeah. There's a range and And, and I like it that way. You know, I think in the beginning, I had a number of female clients, and I was glad to put some men on the list. And do you have multiple projects going at one time? Usually I do. And how's that? Because I have found that to be maybe it's just that, you know, as I get older, I can't do more than one thing at a time, but I really can't think about working on more than one thing at a time if I'm writing. It's happened to me, especially lately, because projects have come up and I just can't say no to them. They're so they're great and interesting. But there is something about the process so far. It seems to sort itself out. My clients are often really busy. So there are these sort of dry spells and I'm able to kind of juggle the projects. It's always

my goal. And so far I've succeeded in having my clients feel like they're my only client. That's really important to me. You haven't yet confused anyone's stories. And I've never had to pull a Peter Brady where I'm changing, you know, running into one room and pretending to be in one meeting and then running back into another meeting. Yet. Yet. No, it's gone well. And there's something nice about going back and forth between the projects for me. I like being busy and they're all moving at different paces. I might be interviewing on one when I'm writing another.

So they're sort of different muscles. Do you have a fantasy client? Many. You don't have to say names if you don't want to, but like types or types of stories that you're hoping to tell. Yeah, that's a good question. And I should have the answer at the ready. But I like to work with people who have something they want to talk about that's beyond just their life story. So they have a reason for telling it. So, you know, you think about Angelina Jolie and the work that she's done outside of acting. And that makes it really interesting to me. Also, there are sort of these everyday heroes, people who aren't famous, but had,

you know, really interesting life story. I love those books. And yeah, and basically, when you look at, you know, the tabloids or the news and you see somebody and you think, I want to know what they were really thinking. those are the stories that I want to do. What are you reading right now? I'm in a book club where we're reading presidential biographies in order. We're on FDR. So it's been about two years. I mean, you should talk to my husband. I think he's read every presidential biography in existence about every president. Like he just consumes them like candy. It's crazy. It is not candy for me. No, neither. Some are better than others. There are some that are pretty great, but not all. The difference between biography and memoir is that especially

presidential biographies feel obligated to tell you every single thing that happened, you know, because it's historically significant. And then there are so many sometimes, like when I was doing an episode on the Lincolns, I'm cross-referencing between, I mean, and who knows how many biographies have been written about President Abraham Lincoln, but, you know, I'm cross-referencing between at least three or four different books. And there are giant holes in some of them that are going meticulously in time through, you know, this happened, then this happened, then this happened. And then there's stuff like none of those mention the fact that his wife, you know,

like threw boiling water in his face, you know, like there are these crazy omissions in any historical account that it's crazy making because on the one hand, it's exhausting to read these books that go, you know, minute by minute through, you know, FDR's 50 terms and in the White House. 50 terms in the White House. And then you also know there's so much being left on the floor that you can't access either because it wasn't recorded or this person wasn't interested in it. Yeah. Well, that's the good thing about the book club is that we don't all read the same book. Oh, wow. So we come to our meetings and people read different books and we share. And so the books are really a slog for me. Yeah. But the meetings... Is this your book club? Is this really a slog for me. Yeah. But the meetings...

Is this your book club? Is this really the one for you? I'm in a few book clubs. So, you know, there's some are... But this one, I really love the meetings. Okay. And I feel everyone else in the book club is in D.C. So they're all a little more in that world.

And it's a good perspective for me. Very different. You're like Gary Busey has a new biography. I really love someone to read it with me. So we ask everyone, you can answer in whatever way you want, including not answering at all. But we ask people to just reflect on whether or not there's been a significant other in their life's work. on whether or not there's been a significant other in their life's work, whether it is an actual spouse or a teacher, a boss, a friend, a colleague, anyone who you feel may have shifted your course in a profound way? Interesting question.

Doesn't have to be just one person either. I mean, my gut is to say my husband, in the beginning of my ghostwriting, he was really, he's also a writer. So he was reading what I was doing. And he's a comedy writer. So he was punching things up for me. They can't help it, can they? But he bailed. He bailed at some point. And, you know, now we joke that we don't read any of each other's work. But definitely to get started. It was great to have another writer right there next to me supporting me. That's great. Thank you so much for being here. This has been really, really interesting. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Thank you. Jason Chalemi, and Joanna Solotaroff. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.