Where's My Check?

I decided to ghostwrite Kevin Slane for a number of reasons. Not only is he a journalist major here at UW-Madison, but he is also one of my closest friends. Brandt’s “’Who’s the President?’” alluded to the importance of a close relationship between author and ghostwriter, so when Kevin informed me that he had a movie review to write for The Daily Cardinal, I figured that imitating his style would be a piece of cake.

Little did I know that purchasing the movie ticket would be the easiest part of the assignment.

After taking in one of the most bizarre movies I had ever seen, Kevin shared the main ideas he wanted to emphasize in his review. As I jotted his opinions down, he dug up a couple of his writing samples. Upon reading these various works, I quickly realized that Kevin enjoyed employing a witty yet critical style in his writing. I found this to be unsurprising, for Kevin, along with being one of the funniest guys I know, also writes for CollegeHumor.com on a regular basis. I knew that I had a pretty sizable challenge on my hands, but I was excited nevertheless. After all, I rarely get the opportunity to exercise my creative writing skills.

After sitting in front of my computer screen with a blank Word document for a good 10 minutes, I realized that my excitement was rather short-lived. Even though I had the ideas right in front of me, I was unable to relay them in an acceptable style. This was extremely frustrating, for typically the hardest part of any paper is coming up with ideas. Once those thoughts are formed, they tend to naturally flow through the fingertips. Instead, I had to laboriously construct every sentence, being mindful of the language I used. I tried to condense the paper with puns, jokes, and clichés, but the further along I got, the less it seemed to sound like Kevin. It felt like this was neither my writing nor his; by emphasizing a facet of his style, I created a hybrid writing fashion.

In fear of overdoing it, I emailed Kevin with the first half of the review. He said it looked pretty good, so I continued being as “punny” as possible. I sent him my first complete draft, but this time I included his name at the top of the paper. He seemed to take more time with a return email, in which he stated the following:

“Some of the clichés feel forced in my mind. Overall, not bad, although if the question is whether I'd be ‘pleased’ if that was your ghostwriting for me, the answer would be no. Here is some of the touching up you should do to pass for my style...”

This was extremely frustrating and nearly disheartening. He not only started deleting and rewording sentences, but also changing their structure altogether. I was offended to a certain extent because although the review was not written in my style, I still felt that he was degrading my creation. Once I went through with certain corrections, he suddenly became pleased, telling me “I really like your imitation of me, it captures my style pretty well.” This was slightly reassuring, but, I wondered, why didn’t he suggest all of those edits before his name was on the piece?

Besides realizing that creative writing does not come naturally to me, I took away a number of important lessons from my experience. Authorship and ownership, for example, are inseparable concepts. As soon as Kevin saw his name at the top of the review, he realized that the words in front of him fell under his responsibility, which sparked an editing rampage focused on making the writing style more as his own. This supports the notion in Howard’s “Modern Authors” that proprietorship is an essential aspect of authorship. In ghostwriting, along with all writing, “property and original genius are mutually entailed” (79). Ghostwriters must therefore relinquish their ties, and because of their ability to detach from what they produce, I have gained more respect for them. Even though ghostwriters may disagree with what they are writing about or have different viewpoints compared to who writes out their paychecks, it is difficult to allow others to take all of the credit for something they do not labor over.