Nobody Else Asked. I Sat on the Folding Chair and He Told Me.
You want to know about the war, he said, making that familiar sucking sound through his teeth. It didn't start with Pearl Harbor for me.
Category: Memoirs
Personal narratives and practical guidance on memoir writing. These articles explore how to capture life experiences in compelling narrative form, drawing from ghostwriting memoir projects including working with clients ranging from a ninety-two-year-old resort developer to professionals documenting their career journeys.
GhostwritingTelling a Stranger Your Life Story: What Memoir Interviews Are Actually Like
The unspoken fear behind every delayed memoir: sitting across from a stranger and telling the true version. What the interviews actually feel like, what you control, and what happens to the hard parts.
GhostwritingIs My Story Actually Worth a Book?
Underneath the price and time objections sits the quiet one: is my story even worth a book? The honest evaluation criteria, the false modesty trap, and the rare cases where the answer is no.
GhostwritingSix of My Own Stories That Looked Like Nothing and Carried a Book
None of these felt like stories when they happened. A brick in a doorway. A microwave on the wrong network. Each one ended up carrying a chapter.
GhostwritingYou Have More Material Than You Think. You Are Just Not Counting It.
Almost everybody who tells me they have no stories tells me three in the next ten minutes. They do not count them because nothing dramatic happened.
GhostwritingWriting about your former employer without getting sued
Memoir, business book, or exposé, if your manuscript touches your time at a former employer, you have to reckon with NDAs, non-disparagement clauses, trade secrets, and defamation. Here is what your old NDA actually restricts, what non-disparagement really prevents, what…
GhostwritingThe acquisition memoir for founders who sold
Founders who sold their company are sitting on the most underused authority book in the market. The acquisition memoir does commercial work no other format can. Here is what to include, what your deal documents legally prevent you from saying,…
GhostwritingIsn’t using a ghostwriter dishonest?
Ghostwriting has been mainstream for two thousand years. Caesar had help. Every president writes their memoirs with a ghostwriter. Most major business books on your shelf were ghostwritten or heavily edited. So the ethical question is not whether someone helped,…
Book ProposalThe all-in cost of a ghostwritten book, beyond the writer’s fee
The writer's fee is the biggest line item in a ghostwritten book, but far from the only one. A real budget folds in editing, design, publishing, and the optional-but-valuable extras, proposal, marketing, audio. Authors who plan only for the fee…
GhostwritingHow to hire a memoir ghostwriter, and what to look for that most articles don’t mention
Hiring a memoir ghostwriter is not the same as hiring a business-book one, and most articles miss the difference. Memoir needs emotional safety in the interviews, a personal instead of professional voice register, and a writer who has actually done…
GhostwritingWriting about family in a memoir without a lawsuit or a family rupture
Writing about family is the most legally and personally fraught part of a memoir, and the worry stalls more projects than anything else. The legal exposure is real but narrower than most authors fear, and the relational side has techniques…
GhostwritingMemoir, autobiography, and biography: which one are you actually writing?
Memoir, autobiography, and biography get tossed around as synonyms, but they are different books with different structures, reader expectations, and markets, and the wrong label produces one that disappoints everyone who opens it. Here is how to tell which one…