More on: The First Meeting: Excerpt from my book, "A Friendly Guide to Writing and Ghostwriting"
Some years back, I had to sign a confidentiality clause before I was allowed to meet a mystery client. I had no idea who she was until an infamous White House ex-intern walked into the room. It had been many years since she’d been publicly humiliated and I wondered what she wanted to write about. Five minutes into the interview, I realized that she was wondering the same thing. She wanted me to tell her what she should write about. I made a few suggestions that she summarily rejected. She wouldn't look me in the eye, she had no vision for her book, and she acted so self-important, I really didn't like her. Apparently she didn't like me either, and when I left, it felt like I’d dodged a bullet. Collaboration is like an arranged marriage. The difference is that if you don’t like your potential partner, you can walk away.
When a client and I are deep in the throes of writing, she might see me more often than she sees her spouse, so we have to be able to get along. When I was considering writing a book for an acting and singing legend, our first meeting took place in a popular Beverly Hills talent agency. When I opened the front door, it felt like I was entering a beehive with agents swarming the halls and staircases, rushing around and buzzing like drones. Someone handed me a bottle of water and ushered me into a conference room where a dozen or so agents and the celebrity were sitting around a table. I was stunned for a moment, unsure with whom I was supposed to speak or where I was supposed to look.
“Are these your handlers?” I asked the star none too tactfully. I couldn't think of anything else to say.
She nodded and said with a smile, “This is how many people it takes to keep me going.”
I was pleased to see that she had a sense of humor. It’s common for a client to think that writing a memoir will be a breeze, but once she starts digging into her psyche and unearthing her secrets, she may be stunned by the painful memories and upsets that rise to the surface. When the material gets challenging, like it always does, a sense of humor comes in handy. No matter how hard someone’s life was or still is, appropriate humor is usually welcome. Appropriate being the operative word. You have to learn how to read your client. It’s good to have a laugh but at the same time, you don’t want to make light of something that has gravitas and deep meaning for your client. It’s up to you to find the balance.
A few weeks into the process with the above client, I was reading through some transcriptions when I found the following sentence:
My husband and I plan spontaneous evenings at home.
I laughed out loud and deleted it from the manuscript but I saved it under a private file called “M’s Greatest Hits. I saved more humorous phrases that she wrote, she seemed to have a penchant for them, and when I got weary from working, I looked back at that file and had a good chuckle. I never showed them to anyone else but it felt good to have a little secret that lightened up the process for me when the going got rough.
It doesn’t matter if a client’s persona is magical or beautiful or both. She is certain to do something that annoys me along the way to remind me that she is all too human. If I like her, I can forgive most anything besides abuse. If I don’t like her, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard. Years back, I met with a has-been actress who wanted to write a book about taking a lesbian lover. Her agent had said the book would be good for her fading career but that rarely ends well. I asked her some questions about how she wanted to approach the material, but on the ride home, she called me on the phone to complain that I had spoken during the initial meeting. I’m not kidding. I guess she wanted me to sit passively and say nothing. Clearly, there was no way I could work with her.
Jumping into someone sometimes else’s skin is always a sacrifice. Throughout years of diving into other people’s psyches, I have found myself vicariously rotting in prison in Afghanistan, getting rained out in a sold out concert in Central Park, losing both legs and winning a gold medal for running on prosthetics in the Paralympics, losing my children in a car accident, suffering from a split personality, training my dog, marrying my childhood sweetheart, and bungee jumping in Australia. And more. I get so deeply entrenched in my clients’ lives, if I were at death’s door, I sometimes wonder whose life would flash before me. Mine or theirs?
When a first meeting is over, I leave with a vague sense of how it went. Then I wait. This is not fun. The client or celebrity will most likely be seeing a number of writers in order to make a choice. In true ghostwriter fashion, I never know who they are and they don't know me. I wonder how long it will be before I hear anything. It could be a few hours, a day, a week, or a month. I once got a job three months after the initial meeting and I’d almost forgotten about it.
One of my more memorable meetings was with Heidi Fleiss, the infamous “Hollywood Madam.” She was 28 when she arrived at my home with a girlfriend and we made a good connection. Having been convicted for tax evasion, she was filled with anxiety, anticipating the sentencing phase of her trial. During that first meeting, I had an opportunity to see her vulnerable side and I felt compassion for her. She wanted to hire me to tell her story, but several weeks after we met, she was incarcerated for close to two years. Interviewing her in prison did not appeal to me and even if it had, she wasn’t allowed to benefit from her crime.
When I think about the most sound advice of ghostwriting, above all else, don’t let the client know if you’re feeling insecure. It’s your turn to be the actor. She’s looking for someone not only to write, but also to shoulder the burdens of organization and make the deadline. She has to see you as someone who is highly capable and knows what you’re doing. If you appear to be unsure of yourself, if you’re hesitating or showing fear, the potential client can smell it a mile away. On the other hand, if you appear strong, relaxed, filled with positive ideas and suggestions, and demonstrate a willingness to let her say her piece and lean on you, you have a good chance of getting hired.