For the successful writing project, this leaves one essential element: The collaborative style of the project and how to ensure you get the best writing work for your money, especially considering, with a ghostwriter, your name will generally be appearing on the finished product. In other words, getting the project finished!
While the ghostwriter will do most of the work, there are a few things you can and should do to help make for a successful project:• Do agree to specific review periods on longer projects, either in time increments like every two weeks, or in volume increments like every 10 pages of work.
• Do carefully and promptly review the material, ideally marking it up either in a software program that “tracks changes” or by hand with a pencil or red pen. In publishing this is called “red lining” and unless you have complete trust in your writer’s talents, you’ll want to be hands-on at least in the beginning.
• Do be somewhat considerate of the writer’s ego when criticizing the work. Some writers are lawyers or consultants by background and will tend to be fairly tough. But others are “softer” more creative personalities, and the reason to be gentle is not so much to be nice for their sake, but because upsetting your ghostwriter will generally cause more problems including delays! Find a nice way to express your concerns.
• Do stay open to the writer’s ideas as the project evolves. Ideas are more valuable than writing, per se, and in a good ghostwriter you can often get the most value from what he thinks about how to structure your piece as from the wordsmithing itself.
• Don’t change the scope or terms or the project midstream. If the work you have hired the writer to do is not necessary any longer, say so, and come to some kind of agreement to end the project early – and perhaps, and perhaps not, to work on something else.
• Don’t ask the writer to make tiny changes you can easily make yourself, such as a single word.
We are confident that your next ghostwriting project will go incredibly well – and that with the right ghostwriter in your business “bag of tricks” you’ll reach your business goals faster, better, and certainly more articulately!
