| |
Cruz Santana
Of all the advantages that ghostwriting offers, one of the greatest must be the opportunity you get to meet people of interest.
Andrew Crofts
I’m an origin story kind of girl. Nothing beats the Marvel movies specifically because I get to see how the teams I grew up with (like the X-Men) came to be. I also get a major kick out of hearing about how other folks I admire got their starts. Mononyms like Madonna and Beyoncé cashiered at Dunkin Donuts and swept hair at a beauty salon, respectively. Baskin Robbins employed the likes of former U.S. President Barack Obama and Julia Roberts. Crazy, eh?
Well, I might not be as famous as any of the folks mentioned above. But I’ve worked with best-selling authors.
Yet, I didn’t start off that way. Nor was anything ever handed to me. I’ve had an incredible, decade-long career because I was ballsy. I went for it, whatever it was, and didn’t look back. And while I didn’t think I’d ever get here—to this level, knowing all I know—I’m grateful for all the lumps and bumps and heartbreaks I earned along the way. Were it not for trial and error and error and error, I would’ve missed out on experiences that have shaped who I am as a woman, mother, and writer.
That’s not to say I’m done learning and have mastered everything there is to know. I’m still learning every day. This book isn’t like being at Hogwarts! Magic won’t be a part of it.
Here’s how it all happened....
EVER GET TIRED OF YOUR parents’ and grandparents’ stories of yore? The tales that conjure up images of half-dressed, Dickensian versions of their nine-year-old selves and the near-miracle of having “walked uphill to school and back, barefoot in six feet of snow”? Yep, I knew you loved them, so I have a story I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
I’m Cruz Santana, a 33-year-old single mom of seven children, battling stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and a 10-year veteran of ghostwriting.
I am who I am and have advice to offer—quite the smarty-pants on the subject of ghostwriting specifically—because I’ve stuck with it for so long. But I didn’t start out this way. Are you ready for my origin story?
Picture 2007 with me. What do you remember? You may recall Beyoncé sending us “to the left, to the left,” Amy Winehouse publicly refusing rehab, and...let’s not forget...dinosaurs roamed the Earth. That was the world I got my start in. It was an unholy and Jurassic mix of snail mail, email, and two-way pagers.
I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no. I didn’t walk barefoot. In the snow. Uphill. Both to school and back home.
But hey, since you asked, I was a mom of three little girls (five months away from birthing baby number four, a boy) and less than 72 hours away from my twenty-third birthday.
My security guard company took up a lot of my time. That wasn’t entirely what I wanted to do with my life. But I wasn’t itching to make a change, either. Yet, I went ahead and dipped my toe into the world of freelancing.
The Internet wasn’t the seven-headed hydra it is today. Back then, while running from a creature with arms too short to tend to its own, err, problems at the height of my imagined Jurassic era—I climbed into my Flintstone-mobile and ran over to the post office to send out my pitch. Yep, the whole pitching process was manual in those days.
To help speed things up, I’d send out 15 to 20 pitches to leads published in a weekly directory. On one busy morning of printing letters and stuffing envelopes, I failed to double check that each letter was perfectly matched with a corresponding envelope. I accidentally sent out a query letter meant for an editor to a publishing company working with an author ready to turn his giant stack of notes into a book.
I never heard from the editor. But the publisher responded claiming the author had read my letter and wished to talk to me about his project. I knew nothing about ghostwriting, but the agent said the author would coach me through it. Not being a novice who worked for free, I quoted the project at $600—a bargain today, a steal back in ’07 (when freelance writers made more money due to there being fewer of us around).
The author loved how well we worked together, so he referred me to a friend of his—a college professor—to do some grant writing work. That morphed into more work writing more grants, technical manuals, and eventually, more manuscripts. By the summer, I was working with a team of writers and a researcher to create a novel for a brand new author.
My earnings weren’t bad either. In month one, I brought in $600. Month two brought me $1,500. And I closed out month three with $1,930 in ghostwriting earnings. These amounts don’t include writing articles as a freelancer. I stayed busy and loved everything I did.
Then, on August first, 2013, I was diagnosed with the bane of my existence—cancer. That, coupled with single-parenthood, tore my life apart. But it hasn’t stopped me.
I’ve kept going and continue to work hard despite my challenges. Like many women, I’m the breadwinner. If I don’t work hard, my kids don’t eat. It’s a huge motivating factor. Taking care of my army of minions while being home to raise them is my why.
ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE traditional 10-year anniversary gift is? Cool, neither do I.
You don’t do this for as long as I have and walk away with the same empty head you had going in. And while I don’t consider myself an “expert” in the way that someone like Patricia Cornwell is, or Neil Patel, there are a few useful things I’ve managed to absorb over the years. Here are the top five:
1. How to mimic the writing voices and tones of just about anybody. It’s arguably the most valuable skill you’ll learn as a ghostwriter. Don’t worry, we’ll dive right into this one in the seventh chapter.
2. Developing your own voice shouldn’t be left for later. It’s too valuable. Your voice will change as you absorb bits and pieces of the voices of others. It’s okay. Let it happen. In the end, you’ll be a better, more well-rounded writer.
3. No matter how much it stings, you want your clients to be 100 percent honest with you. You’ll grow into a smarter, stronger writer. I’ve been called almost every name in the book by novelists and editors. You wouldn’t believe my stories! But even if their words cut deep, I kept going. Today, I perform better for my clients if they’re willing to give me honest, unbridled feedback.
4. The best way to improve your writing skills is to start a word bank right away—like, right now. It’s a resource you cannot do without. You need to be able to make notes on words you hear or like. A word bank is a cool way to do that. It takes only a moment to set up and will be updated as you go forward. To help you get started, you can download a word bank in the free bonus area here.
5. While ghostwriting is technically a subset of freelance writing, it’s a whole different animal. Its practice requires you to develop mental muscles you didn’t know existed. You’re in charge of someone else’s work, their voice. Often, you’ll find clients difficult to reach or not as engaged as you need them to be. In those instances, you have to be the adult and bring the focus back to the task at hand. It forces you to lose your training wheels.
There are more lessons than that. But I’m anxious to move on to the meat and bones of getting you started. However, before we hop right in, I need to emphasize something to you:
(IN THE INTEREST OF full disclosure, let’s get something straight right here and now: Ghostwriting is NOT for everyone! And there are hundreds of different ways in which you can work as a ghostwriter. Some are simple one-off gigs you hand over without ever thinking about them again. Others stay with you. Novels and memoirs do that to me. Years later, I still carry around bits of them with me in the back of my mind.)
> Are super organized and can sort large amounts of information.
> Have spent at least one year as a full-time professional freelance writer. Generally speaking, it’s best if you’re already used to the rhythm of a life lived as a freelancer before you start taking on regular clients.
> Want to level up income by diversifying into different fields. I’ve managed to stay in the game by doing just that.
Ghostwriting allows you to break up the monotony by giving you control over what you do. Want to learn about crafting newsletters that engage? Ask a buddy to let you do hers for free and test the engagement. Keep what works, and tweak until it’s perfect. Wanna write fiction, but you’re doing well with a B2B niche? No problemo! Simply pepper your schedule with fiction projects.
Look, I know what it takes for me to put something together I’m actually proud to have others see. For a lot of writers, the thought of going through the painstaking process of creating something, and then having that work not be theirs, is a hard pill to swallow.
It gets better with time. The more assignments you hand in to your clients, the less likely you are to take it personally when they edit your masterpiece into the seemingly boiled down version you think you’re looking at when it’s all said and done. I’d suggest that you at least be open to it.
> Would be totally fine with others claiming ownership of their work. Again, some writers would rather sit in a darkened corner, poking their own bruises than let anyone else take credit for what they’ve done. Yet there are writers who are happy to be in the background, working to master their craft, learning new skills, and meeting interesting folks.
> Have a thick (or slightly thick) skin. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but clients can make you wish you had a Valium martini!
Odds are, at one point or another, you’ll have someone you respect cut your work down (and sometimes you) like you’re a redwood in the way of a gold mine. You absolutely have to let it out. If you’re a crier, cry. If you’re a screamer, scream. But hold your tongue with your clients.
For example, I once literally had someone call me names I wouldn’t dare regale you with for several hours because, and I quote, “Hemingway wouldn’t ever use ‘a la!’ Anybody with a pulse knows it’s supposed to be ‘á la’ and you’re a [fill in your favorite adjective] for messing that up for me.”
All I could do was apologize and fix my mistake. The guy never let it go, but I learned more in my career from him than anyone else. And not because of the put-downs, but because he’d let me take on more work faster than anyone else on our team.
SO WITH ALL OF THAT, why consider adding ghostwriting to your service offerings? Because it’s pretty darn cool!
In the introduction to this book, Sally talked about the benefits of ghostwriting. But it goes way beyond more cash and better clients. Here are some of the reasons why I ghostwrite...
You love editing and re-editing the same friggin’ thing over and over again until your eyes bleed, right? Of course! We all do! Well, there’s very little editing to be done. I ask to make my client’s changes on their behalf because I like to learn from them and add their preferences to a mental file of what they like and don’t like so much. See, I’m always looking for ways to get better.
For the most part, however, you only need to write. You probably won’t have to review or promote or share anything, which is nice.
Once you get into this, you’ll meet folks you wouldn’t meet any other way. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to meet professionals doing the same thing I was who were further ahead. I absorbed from them everything I could. A tech entrepreneur taught me coding basics back in 2009.
What’s more, you’ll learn skills that you can parlay into other service offerings you can use to further diversify your biz! My first real exposure to editing, the real editing, and what makes a book worthy of being published—and how to predict its market viability—came from a true professional. I don’t think she liked me at first, but this woman had 40 solid years of experience, and I volunteered to help her with a finished manuscript. I fell in love with it. (And it’s a skill that has totally helped me level up my business, as I provide professional editing services, too.)
And of course, the income is great. I polled a few of my ghost colleagues and found that an established ghostwriter specializing in manuscripts made $14,952 to $24,669 from one project 50,000 to 75,000 words long. Another ghost got $12,500 for just 33,000 words. And yet another scored $22,500 for 64,500 words. Meanwhile, a co-author took home $33,550 for 50,000 words. And that’s just for writing words. No marketing. No endless social media promotions. None of that is your problem when you’re a ghostwriter.
In most instances, ghosting is much easier than writing a book for yourself. Think about it. My client, the author, gives me notes and puts them in order for me to follow. I build an outline, followed by a timeline. Then it’s all writing, baby! Without having to constantly stop for research, I get to watch my going hourly rate climb on high.
Feeling inspired? I hope so. Time is precious. And I want to spend as much of that dwindling resource passing on what I’ve learned to you. It’s the reason I agreed to write this book. It’s my duty to give you all I’ve acquired in the last decade. Now go forth, dear reader. I bequeath to thee tales of ghostwriter lore.
THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK, we’ll ask you to take action. You can download a workbook with all the action steps from the Bonus Area here.
Reread the section titled “Ghostwriting Is for Professional Freelance Writers Who...” Choose the bullet point in that section that best describes you and your experience as a freelance writer. Do you think you’d be a better ghostwriter because of it? Why or why not?
Now that you know a bit about me, let’s dive into the good stuff. In the next chapter, I spell out exactly what ghostwriting is. You may be surprised to learn that you’re already doing or have done ghostwriting work.