For a few years while nourishing my addiction to writing I wondered why anyone would want to ghostwrite. Didn’t that mean the other person gets the credit and the writer doesn’t? Yes, it does mean that. And so in the last two years of freelance writing jobs the idea nagged at me off and on. Then one day I saw a job posted on the freelance site I use that wanted a ghostwriter for a short story. The theme wasn’t something I wanted to write about but the fact the story was to take place in the late 1880s lured me in. I found through research of that era in the territory of Wyoming was more than interesting and so I sent my proposal in and got the job. Since it wasn’t something I was interested in writing under my own name I found it very satisfying. Don’t get the idea it was anywhere near a demeaning theme, not by a long shot.

That client hired me again and soon I found I was looking at jobs for ghostwriting. In the meantime I was working on getting my own book in the mystery genre self-published and successfully did that this past February 2014 (“Heart of the Wheat Shaft – Mystery in Nebraska Wheatland”) and now working on my second one, the first in a series.

I still take on ghostwriting jobs and put as much effort into that as I do my writing that appears under my own name. I like the diversity of subject matter. I like it that I can pick and choose. When I see something posted for a contractor that is something I want to write about under my own name, I pass it by.

I’m not planning to give everything away when it comes to my addiction. But I have to say I find ghostwriting is a liberating exercise. It takes me outside my comfort zone and that’s not a bad thing.