What I Learned as A Ghostwriter And Why It’s Not for Me

I’ve written a number of stories for other people as a ghostwriter. And although some experiences were fun, many, including the most recent, were evil and built on deception. Even though I went out of my way not to face the truth, I had no choice because the lies were too much. It literally sickened me and my husband, who could do nothing more but shake his head through it all.

Many people want to write, but don’t have the time or creativity. But God made sure to give me more than my share of this gift, and at times it can be overwhelming, but I find peace writing, no matter what it is.

When I started helping people who had a message but didn’t know how to share their vision on paper, I didn’t judge their work. I gave them the benefit of the doubt by going in with the outlook that their thoughts, ideas, concepts, and quotes were their own, but boy was I in for a big fat awakening. I guess the Universe must have still had more life lessons to teach me, and this one was nasty and ugly to the core. Can you say, sheep in wolves clothing? Or charlatan. It was nothing nice. The Devil was definitely sprinkled in the details.

I started working with a young man who seemed to have a good idea at first, and I was really excited to work on his story. I received it, and it was something I’d written already called Breakthrough. At times, many things that flew out of his mouth jolted me, but I kept moving along.

As a professional author, I love writing. I have a love affair with words, but this individual, who will remain nameless, had no decency or respect whatsoever, and he even had the nerve to throw spirituality in the mix of it all. Several times, I shook off what I was feeling while helping this person because I knew what if felt like to have a desire to share something special with the world. But when I tried to help this unknown person who has never written a book in their lives, I wasn’t prepared for the fact that he had asked me to help him steal my own story. Did you hear what I said?!

Shocking, I know, but this person had the gall to feed me my story-line back to me line for line and act as if it was his own. Wait one goddamn minute, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, not only did this person take the concept of my book, he went one step future—talk about stupid—and told me that he felt God had given him each idea for his book. You mean, my book.

I listened because this was too good to be true. Either he thought I was a fool or that he could steal all of my content from right from under my nose, or should I say, hands, since this fool was paying me to write my story for him as his own. What’s funny was I recorded everything that was said during our phone discussions, with this fool’s permission of course. I don’t know which was worse, his arrogance and ego, or intellectual stupidity. Either way, I repeatedly went out of my way to address this so-called concept of his book.

Talk about gas-lighting like a son of gun, he only wanted me to repeat after him, “Say, this is my book and God gave it to me.” Which seemed to be the theme on every call. Call after call made me realize that this fool couldn’t give me the concept because he was talking to the creator of it, as if I wouldn’t recognize my own child. I even had to tell this nincompoop that we will share this baby. Hint number one, but did he get it? No.

Interview call after the next, he revealed his hand like the liar and thief he was. In retrospect, I realize why I couldn’t write his story, and that was because he didn’t have one. He had stolen my concept, claimed it as his own, and acted as if God had sent it to him. He was delusional and even had the audacity to share with me that he wanted to write a relationship book next, when he had no one.

His spirit wasn’t right, and I started to get vexed, annoyed, and darn-right frustrated with the shenanigans and lies. Everything I said in response to his so-called story wasn’t correct, even when breaking down one of my soul chapters. Oh lord, do I laugh or sue him for plagiarism, because I recorded it on every phone interview with his permission. And yes, he signed an agreement. I won’t tell you how much I charged this fool to listen to him talk for hours on end about my concept of my book that he was hijacking as his own. Talk about embarrassing for me. I should have cut him off, or better yet, called him out, but I was trying to be nice.

I’ve since moved away from being a ghostwriter because it was nothing more than a heist in the making. If there is a God, he was definitely looking out for me during that process, and I would never allow myself to go through such foolishness again.

As for the thief? I guess he’s somewhere watching someone else’s life and waiting to come up on a scheme of twisting someone else’s story around for his own. I may be wrong to say this, but people like that deserve whatever life throws their way.

If I’m ever asked to write someone’s story, I dare not travel down that road again. But as Kelissa once said in an episode of Game of Thrones, “Thank you for this lesson.”

Visit www.johannasparrow.com