Lauren Slater

Coaching

Coaching is designed to help writers shape their ideas, discover their plots, and hone their prose. As a coach and ghostwriter I work closely with my collaborator, Karen Propp. (www.karenpropp.com) I've coached many writers through books that have found their way into press.

If you think you might benefit from a writing coach, contact me to tell me a bit about the project, and we can discuss whether not it makes sense to work together.

Ghostwriting

The first time someone asked me to ghostwrite her book I said, “no.” Ghostwriting, I thought, was for hacks, a deceptive art practiced by lowlife writers and desperate wanna- be authors either too rich or too lazy to write their own work. I was wrong on all counts.

I am lucky that the first ghostwriting request came from someone who was persistent, and whose life story was interesting enough so that eventually curiosity got the better of me and I relented. I fully expected, however, that the most rewarding aspect of the job would be the money, but on that count I was wrong again. While my own work still holds my highest attention, I nevertheless have discovered in ghostwriting a viable and valid creative process that I am proud to publicly declare.

Ghostwriting, as I practice it, is a highly collaborative process, so if you’re looking for someone to scribe your opus while you catch a Coppertone tan, I’m not the ghost-gal for you. I ghostwrite because I have found that the clients I take on are often transformed by the process of having to try and translate for me their life stories or finest ideas into conversation that I can rework as usable, if not inspired, prose. I expect every client to write for me a table of contents that often becomes the template for their book. This is often a difficult, and occasionally painful process, because it forces people to confront the issues that have lead them to seek a ghostwriter in a very direct way. I had one client, a convicted felon, who, in writing his table of contents, broke down in tears. He explained to me that he had not confronted the truth about his life in years.

This is why I ghostwrite, because of this man’s tears. Because it had been years, for him, for many of us, too much time, too many words, lost but now reclaimed. As a practicing clinician/psychologist, I pushed my patients to find and then write the plot lines of their lives. Ghostwriting, thus, is a natural extension of my early clinical training, but without the constraints imposed by a doctor/patient relationship. In ghostwriting, I become, paradoxically, clearer about who I am by living inside the worlds of people who I am not; I become an exorcist, of sorts, not a ghost at all, not by a long shot; the clients are the ghosts, but by the end of the books they feel firmer, their lives seem truer, and they hold in their hands a product made of pages but reflective, like glass; I give the gift of many mirrors. I am lucky to do so.

The reflection is never mine. Neither is the book. I am not really a ghostwriter. Think of me as your underwriter. I invest in you. Because you are worthwhile, you have generated an entire life, or a single, rich idea. This is why the return is yours to keep.