Is hiring a memoir ghostwriter a good idea?

You’ve lived a life that you feel merits a memoir. Perhaps you’ve risen from poverty to riches, perhaps you have done a “first” and you want people to know it was you, or perhaps you want to celebrate a lost world, a world that has since disappeared. Should you write yourself or should you use a memoir ghostwriter?

You try your hand at writing but you realize that it is too difficult and that the learning curve is too steep. Perhaps you have begun to write and are lost in the shaping of an interesting memoir. (What does it mean to “shape” and “pace” a book?) Or, perhaps you could write the memoir but you are so busy with other things that you hardly have the time to devote to it.

These scenarios call for a ghostwriter who can guide you through the process and write the book as per your instructions. But, you don’t feel comfortable with that. You have reservations.

1. Isn’t using a memoir ghostwriter a bit like cheating?

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There are Ways to Save on Ghostwriting Fees

Finding ways to save on ghostwriting fees can be pressing when the story needs to be told but you have to cut costs. Hiring a ghostwriter or co-author is, no questions about it, an expensive proposition.

There are ways, however, to cut the costs by doing some of the work yourself. Before doing that work, however, you would do well to ask the writer you have hired about how to turn the work in in a format that s/he can most readily make use of. Here are some suggestions:

1. Write as much of the text as you can.

It does not need to be particularly well written — just as  good as you can make it. Perhaps that will be in snippets or even in outline form. Type the text into a computer file to send it to the ghostwriter. (The ghostwriter would have to charge you to enter text into a computer file so this is a step that can save on ghostwriting fees right in the beginning.) Your writer can rewrite or polish what you send. What I love about receiving this sort of text is that it gives me your “voice” and a whole set of your vocabulary to use.

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