Ghostwriting Reflection

A little background into the ghostwriting that I attempted is as follows. My roommate is an opinion columnist for the Badger Herald and writes an article for each Monday’s edition of the paper. This week he decided to write about the United States lagging internet industry when compared to the rest of the world and how steps need to be taken to improve the internet for many economic reasons.

In class while discussing the ghostwriting assignment I realized that there were a lot of people that felt uneasy while completing a paper for a different person. I did not get these same feelings. I felt that it was almost easier to write a paper for someone else than it is to write one for myself. All of the main ideas were laid before me and all I had to do was simply put them into meaningful sentences.

The arranging of the ideas into sentences is what caused the most problems for me though. I had to make sure that my style did not overpower the paper, since it was meant to be written in a form resembling the person I was writing for. It was not a sense of uneasiness that made this assignment difficult; it was an inability to prevent my own ideas about the topic from shining through. My roommate told me exactly what he was planning on having in the article and exactly how much time I was supposed to spend discussing each main point, but it was difficult to not add my own twist and other topics since I had a little bit of a background on the topic. I continuously caught myself attempting to put this twist on the entire paper when in reality it was meant to be in his form and be his ideas.

Running into these problems led me to a better understanding of what the term “author” means. While writing this column for my roommate I was not the “author” of the work, because my ideas were not the ones being expressed and in the end my name was not going to be associated with the article. I have learned a better distinction between what it means to be a writer and what it means to be an author. When going through this assignment I learned that it is entirely possible to be either a writer or an author and it is not required that if you are one than you must be the other. It is possible to be a published author without actually being a writer. From this assignment I’ve learned that an author is the individual that has their name on the completed work, whether they are the ones who actually did the writing or not. All of the true work when completing a work lies with the writer or writer that puts all of the ideas together coherently and makes sure all of the ideas flow.

I can’t help but wonder if professional ghostwriters run into the dilemma of knowing that they are great writers but not considered authors. I would have been honored to have the article I wrote published, even though I would not have been associated with it, but I would have been left wondering if I would have been published had I submitted it myself. If one has the ability to be a writer, is it within reach for them to become an author also and submit work under than own name rather than the name of the famous author that employs them. Are professional ghostwriters immune to this because it is their career and they have to push these thoughts out, or like me, do they get the feeling that they could be doing more with their talents?