A Ghostly Tale

A friend was telling me how, at a wedding in New York, he got chatting with the young woman seated beside him. He asked her what she did for a living and she said she was a ‘ghost writer’.

Imagining all kinds of ghoulish protagonists and spooky storylines, my friend was intrigued.

“So does that mean you write books about the dead?” he asked innocently. But his new friend (whom he had secretly nick-named “Casper”) enlightened him that a ‘ghost writer’ doesn’t actually write about ghosts, but writes on behalf of someone else.

“Who do you write for then?” my friend asked. Casper shook her head and drew pincered fingers across her lips in a zipper gesture.

“Can’t tell you, I’m afraid,” she said. “Ghost writers often write for quite well known authors. Naturally the authors don’t want the public to know that they are not actually writing the books and their publishers don’t care who’s actually writing them, as long as they make their squillions.”

My friend was aghast, “You mean some of our big-name, world-reknowned authors may not even be writing their own books?”

Casper, however, was giving nothing away. She explained that she gets paid a lot of money to write …. and keep her mouth shut.

“But don’t you ever get the urge to blurt out that you actually wrote so-and-so’s latest best-seller?” my friend persisted. “Or the desire to write a book under your own name?”

“Not much point, really,” Casper replied. “My name means nothing to the reading public and I can’t exactly say “Ooh, but I wrote “Blah Blah” (fabulous best-seller) for “Blah Blah” (Big Name Author) can I? It would rather jeopardise my ghostly status … and my bank balance.”

My friend took her point but shook his head in bewilderment at why someone would be willing to ‘sell’ themselves in such a way.

This story made me wonder what it would be like if people in other industries decided to have ‘ghost workers’ to do the actual work, while they sat back and collected the money and kudos.

For instance, can you imagine the ‘ghost plumber’ sliding selflessly down the sewer to retrieve something nasty from the pipeworks then standing back, unperturbed, while the lady of the house lavishes cash, thanks and a slab of Carlton Cold on the ‘real plumber’ (who’s been watching from the safety of the back porch?) I don’t think so.

Or the ‘ghost-detective’ who risks losing life, limb (and occasionally the contents of his stomach) unearthing clues and dead bodies, only to pass all the information to the ‘real detective’ who gets all the credit … and the promotion? Doubtful.

But I guess, in reality, there are ‘ghost personnel’ in every organisation right across the world; people whose individual work is passed off as the intellect, the research, the expertise or the ‘brainchild’ of someone else. Funnily enough, it’s actually a win-win situation. After all, in the spirit of reciprocity, those whose ideas and projects are used, do get paid for their creativity and hard work. It’s how human organisations get things done.

So I guess those best-selling authors with ‘ghost writers’ tucked in their turrets are not so despicable after all. The reading public gets another guaranteed pot-boiler, the ‘ghost writer’ gets a tidy little sum and the author gets to sit on her sun-lounge collecting royalties (and she can blame someone else for any writing gaffes!)

Not that a ghost writer would necessarily be an easy scapegoat for blame, for surely she would just deny all knowledge of the matter (as per her contract) and get off Scot free, wouldn’t she?

And fair enough too. After all, there have to be some perks in being invisible!