When I was seventeen, I spent Christmas visits sitting on a folding chair next to my grandfather’s easy chair while he told me about the war: the USS Oahu, the fall of Corregidor, three years and four months as a prisoner of the Japanese.
Decades later, working from my notes and the journal he wrote after the war, I turned it into a book, Behind the Wire. By then he’d been gone for forty years, and the journal and my memory of those conversations were all I had. That’s the situation many families are in.
Families come to me with their own versions of it all the time. There’s the shoebox of notebooks found after a funeral, the letters from the army years, the cassette tapes labeled in a handwriting nobody will see again, the manuscript that stops in the middle of a sentence. Most of them ask the same thing. Can this still become a book, and can it be done without putting words in the mouth of someone who can’t approve them?
Can a ghostwriter finish my late parent’s memoir from their journals and recordings?
Yes. Ghostwriters work from written and recorded material all the time, and a parent’s journals, letters, recordings and partial manuscript can be the foundation of a strong book. The ghostwriter reads and listens to everything, finds the story running through it, organizes it, and writes the connecting material that turns fragments into a book.
How much material you have shapes the kind of book it becomes. A nearly finished manuscript needs editing and a final chapter. A shoebox of letters and notebooks can become a book built around those documents. A few recordings and a lot of family memory can become your book about your parent, with their words at the heart of it.
Whose voice should a ghostwritten memoir of my late parent use?
There are three common approaches, and each is honest in its own way. A first-person memoir in your parent’s voice works when there’s enough of their own writing and recorded speech to capture how they sounded. The ghostwriter builds the book from their words and fills gaps in their style. Be clear in the book, in a note or foreword, about how it was assembled. A book built around their documents presents their letters, journal entries and transcribed recordings largely as they are, with a narrator, often you, providing context and connecting the pieces.
A book about your parent tells their story from your point of view, as a child who knew them, with their own words quoted throughout. This works well when their material is thin, or when your relationship with them is part of the story.
I won’t recommend a voice until I’ve read everything, and I’d be wary of any writer who picks one on the first call. That choice decides whose book this is, and a family that gets it wrong ends up with a memoir their parent wouldn’t recognize.
What material should I gather for a ghostwriter?
Everything you can find, before you decide what matters:
- ► Journals, diaries, notebooks and datebooks.
- ► Letters sent and received, cards, and emails.
- ► Audio and video recordings, including old cassettes, voicemails and home movies.
- ► Any manuscript, outline or notes toward a book.
- ► Photos, with whatever you know about each one.
- ► Documents: military records, certificates, work records, newspaper clippings.
- ► Obituaries, eulogies and anything written about them.
Old formats need care. Get cassettes, videotapes and fragile papers digitized by a professional before anyone handles them much. I cringe when a family plays the only tape of a parent’s voice on a forty-year-old machine just to hear what’s on it, because a snapped cassette takes that voice with it and no transcript brings it back.
Can a ghostwriter interview people who knew my parent?
Yes, and it’s among the best ways to fill the gaps. Siblings, old friends, former coworkers, army buddies and neighbors each remember different pieces of a person. Interviews with them can supply stories the documents never mention, confirm dates and details, and add perspectives that make your parent more fully human on the page.
What a good ghostwriter won’t do is invent scenes, conversations or feelings your parent never recorded and present them as fact.
I’ve written memoirs from the papers of someone who had died. The work is the same as any other book, except I’m interviewing the brothers, sisters and other family members instead of the person the book is about. I can’t ask for direct knowledge, so I ask for what they saw and remember. The book comes out different because of it, leaning more on how others saw the person than on the person’s own account. Expect that before you start.
Start soon. The people who remember your parent’s early life won’t be around forever, and each one who’s gone takes stories with them. My article Witnesses Are Dying is about exactly this urgency.
How does a ghostwriter handle gaps in my parent’s story?
There will be gaps. Journals skip years, letters stop, and nobody knows what happened in 1974. A good ghostwriter handles gaps openly: acknowledging them, describing what’s known about the period, and letting the reader see where the record goes quiet.
What a good ghostwriter won’t do is invent scenes, conversations or feelings your parent never recorded and present them as fact. I won’t do it, and I think a writer who fills the gaps with made-up dialogue is putting words in a dead person’s mouth and signing their name to it.
If the book is written in their voice, any reconstruction should be minimal, grounded in what’s known, and disclosed in a note. Family members will trust the book more for its honesty about what’s missing.
Who owns my late parent’s writing and the ghostwritten memoir?
Your parent’s unpublished writing belongs to their estate and passes to their heirs, usually under their will or the laws where they lived. If you have siblings, you share the rights with them unless the will says otherwise. Before publishing, make sure the people who hold those rights agree, and put the agreement in writing.
The ghostwriting contract should name who is commissioning the book and who will own it. If several heirs are involved, decide in advance who makes decisions about the manuscript, so disagreements don’t stall it for years. My article on what happens to a book when the author dies covers estate rights in more detail. An estate lawyer can confirm what applies to your family.
Should a ghostwritten memoir of my parent be published or kept private?
Either. Many of these books are printed in small numbers for children, grandchildren and relatives, and they become family treasures. Others tell stories with wider value, such as war experiences, immigration, a notable career or a slice of history, and deserve a broader audience.
You don’t have to decide at the start. Many families begin with a family edition and publish more widely later. If the book includes private family matters or living people who might be hurt, think carefully before a public release. I’d push back on any family that wants to use a parent’s journals to settle an old score. The parent can’t explain or defend those pages anymore, and the relatives named in them can, for the rest of the family’s life.
My take
A parent’s journals deserve a writer who knows when to stop. Fill the gaps from what’s known, say so in a note, and never put words in a mouth that can’t object. Settle the rights with your siblings in writing before anyone starts. And don’t use the book to settle an old score. Your parent can’t defend those pages anymore, and the relatives named in them will carry them for life.
Where should you start with a late parent’s papers?
Start with preservation. Get fragile tapes and papers digitized before anyone handles them much. Then gather everything in one place, make a list of the people who knew your parent and are still here, and talk to your siblings about who holds the rights and who makes decisions. All of that comes before choosing a voice for the book.
Once the material is together, a ghostwriter can read it and tell you what kind of book it wants to be. My ghostwriting services include interviewing family members, and the Book Discovery Intensive is a good way to find out what your parent’s papers could become before committing to a full memoir.
A parent’s papers deserve a book that’s honest about who they were, gaps and all. I’d sooner see a family print twenty copies of a true book than sell thousands of a polished one their parent wouldn’t recognize, and I think every writer who takes on these projects owes the dead that much.
I built a book from the journal my grandfather wrote after the war. Behind the Wire is his true story as a prisoner of war, and it shows what a family’s written record can become.
