A month before I write anything for a new ghostwriting client, I follow them around. I sit in on meetings. I have dinner with their family. I take one of their team members out for coffee. I meet their oldest friend. I have never had a client refuse. I have had two who did not understand why until the book came out and the voice was theirs.
What the month looks like
Week one is the interviews I would have done anyway. Ninety minutes a day, four days that week, a transcript at the end of each day. This is the material. But it is not enough.
Week two I sit in the client's office. I do not ask questions. I take notes on what they say when they think I am not listening. How they greet the receptionist. What they interrupt to check on. Which meeting they arrive early for and which one they walk out of at exactly the scheduled end.
Week three I meet the people around them. Spouse. Head of chief of staff. The engineer who has been on the team for twelve years. The board member they text at midnight. I ask the same three questions of each of them. What does she do when she is stressed. What is the story about her she wishes people knew. What is the story about her she wishes people would stop telling.
Week four I go home and I write nothing for four days. I sleep on it. I re-read the transcripts. I re-read the notes. On the fifth day I write the first paragraph of the book. It is usually wrong. But it is closer to right than it would have been without the month.
What the month teaches
What clients say about themselves in an interview is what they think is true. What everyone around them says is what is actually true. The gap between the two is where the book lives.
The month costs the client about thirty percent more than a book without it. Every client who has done the month has said it was worth every cent. Every client who has skipped the month has read the first draft and asked me to start again.
The one exception
Some clients cannot let me shadow them. Journalists cannot. Senior political figures cannot. In those cases I do the shadowing at a distance. I read everything they have written. I watch every interview. I read the reviews of their own reviews. It is second best. It works.
Comments (4)
The four days of writing nothing. Also underrated. The subconscious does the sorting.
Shadowing is the single line item I add to every proposal and it is the single line item clients try to cut. I never let them.
The gap between what clients say about themselves and what everyone around them says. This is where the book lives. Yes.
The three questions to everyone around them. What she does when stressed. What story she wishes people knew. What story she wishes they would stop telling. Adopting all three immediately.