United Ghostwriters

How do you measure the success of a book?

June 4, 2020June 5, 2020
by ShannonKyle

How do you measure the success of a book? While everyone would love their book to be a bestseller, ultimately the success of a book is a subjective matter for both a ghostwriter and their author. When I asked the other United Ghostwriters what they believed made a book a successful, the question elicited many surprising responses. For Gillian Stern, who has just delivered a manuscript for Hodder, success means forming an intense professional intimacy with her client. ‘That way the book results in an accessible, yet layered and powerful read,’ she explains. This makes perfect sense, because if a

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020
by Simon Rae

Everybody has their lockdown story. Mine, much to my surprise, is more eventful than I could have anticipated. Inspired by a BBC competition for a short television play showing how people were coping with lockdown, I collaborated with a friend on a piece about two writers who are working on a script together using Skype. They’re having difficulties, firstly with Skype, then with each other’s track changes and differing perspectives on their characters (‘Nigel’s gay? Where did that come from?’). The relationship turns fractious, and as one is a Liverpool fan and the other a Chelsea supporter, the path from

May 20, 2020May 20, 2020
by Ian Shircore

Question 1, for two points: Where is the headquarters of the Dyslexia Research Trust? Question 2, one point for each part of your answer: How many arms and how many hearts does an octopus have? Question 3: Which is further west, Edinburgh or Bristol? I don’t know about you, but I’ve become quietly obsessed with questions like this over the last few weeks. An awful lot of us have been passing our evenings Zooming in to quizzes organised by friends or family or outside organisations. And some of the biggest events have attracted huge numbers of people. A Virtual Pub

May 11, 2020May 11, 2020
by SpencerHonniball

With the UK, and most of the world, to a lesser or greater extent, in lockdown, much of the business community has understandably suffered as the coronavirus takes a wrecking ball to society. Collectively, we hope, of course, that some form of recognisable order returns sooner rather than later; though the Prime Minister’s roadmap to easing lockdown will have done little to clarify what may lie ahead. Not knowing how long we are to be largely confined to our homes can be terribly unnerving, though many of us will thankfully be able to work from wherever we are based, in

May 4, 2020May 4, 2020
by CaroHandley

As we continue with the lockdown that sometimes seems – despite glimpses of the light ahead – to be going on for ever, we must continue to find ways to cope and adapt. I’ve been reading Amor Towles wonderful ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’. In it he quotes from the Essays of Michel de Montaigne, ‘If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them’. It’s a similar sentiment to the one that Victor Frankl expresses in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ (a book that begs to be read in lockdown) when he says, ‘When we are no longer able

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