Why I became a ghostwriter (despite myself)
The real answer is that I didn’t choose the path at all — I fell into it as a result of other work I was doing.
And do you know what? Initially I resisted. I mean, I’m a creative — I create my own things from my own imagination — why would I want to write as if I were someone else? But I realised that, for one reason or another, I hadn’t actually created anything tangible or saleable since 2020, when I wrote “And the Crows Began to Wonder” during lockdown.
Instead of being creative, I was already using other people’s voices — or rather their brand voices — to create blogs, articles, and website copy. So why not take it one step further and help people tell the stories of their lives?
I won’t claim to be the world’s foremost memoir expert, but I do have a knack for helping people uncover memories they thought were long forgotten. The questions I ask may seem innocent enough, but they’re designed to unlock stories, trigger recollections, and send the mind wandering down pathways it hasn’t visited in years. More often than not, that’s where the most interesting memories are waiting.
When working with a one-to-one client, the usual mode of operation is a series of video calls. The first few are a “getting to know each other” stage, where we mutually decide if we’re a match. That matters on both sides — because I, as the writer, could become party to the client’s deepest, darkest memories. They have to trust me, and I have to believe they’re ready to fully engage. Sometimes it won’t work, we won’t gel, and that’s absolutely fine. We both move on.
Do I still want to write my own stories? Of course I do. But economics currently dictate that I need a greater income than I can achieve writing my own books. It’s a sad but true fact that many self-published books sell fewer than 100 copies in their lifetime — a significant proportion fewer than 10, often only to friends and family. Maybe when my income stabilises I’ll return to my first love of creating stories. But that time isn’t now.
Which brings me to the moment that changed things.
Last year, I was writing for a client whose preferred way of working was to record his thoughts on his phone and send me the audio. And it struck me — first, that it really isn’t fair that only people with the money to employ a ghostwriter get to leave a memoir behind. And second, that perhaps I could build something that combined my questioning methods with that same simple act of voice recording.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Last month, The Memoir Maker became a working reality — and the idea that anyone, not just those who can afford a ghostwriter, can now capture their own story is something I am really proud of.
