Bashing Out Readable Nonsense
Doing the odd day of work as a freelance editor has helped reinforce my tendency to deride any tinpot author* who has pretensions about their ‘art’. Writing about the best ways to infiltrate a terrorist organisation does not make you an artist, it just makes you a writer and a bad one at that if you do not even understand how to correctly use the word ‘disabuse’. Alan Moore could talk about his art, so could Ken MacLeod, Iain Sinclair or Will Self, but no-one writing about the techniques of phone tapping should have any puffed-up notions about the book they are producing.
Knocking out chapter intros for predictable excursions into how to commit sabotage, surveillance and sedition as part of my most recent job has also generated another effect. It has made me resolute over my decision to never again do any ghost writing for former members of the SAS or Security Service. I seem to have a worrying knack for quickly bashing out readable nonsense for possible crypto-fascists to put their names and BEMs to.
*Yes I know I am tinpot author and hack myself, but I have no pretensions that my books are great literature.
Knocking out chapter intros for predictable excursions into how to commit sabotage, surveillance and sedition as part of my most recent job has also generated another effect. It has made me resolute over my decision to never again do any ghost writing for former members of the SAS or Security Service. I seem to have a worrying knack for quickly bashing out readable nonsense for possible crypto-fascists to put their names and BEMs to.
*Yes I know I am tinpot author and hack myself, but I have no pretensions that my books are great literature.
Labels: Ghostwriting
4 Comments:
I think you devalue nonfiction writing unfairly. Since that is the type of writing I read the most, I can tell you that there are definitely those who can and those who can't. A number of producers of great literature found equal delight and facility in nonfiction, translations of nonfiction work, or reportorial writing - Nelson Algren, Carl Sandburg, and Elizabeth Bishop among them. I consider one of your own colleagues in the espionage/crime field - Martin Dillon - a gifted literary artist.
I in no way devalue non-fiction writing. The majority of books I read are non-fiction and some of my most adored works of literature are biographies, reportage and historical works. Peter Ackroyd, Jon Savage, Charles Higham and a host of others inside and outside of the fields I write in, have produced amazing literature whilst writing non-fiction. They and writers of their quality could easily be called literary artists. However, the book I spent some time editing this week had no artistic merit despite its author’s puffed-up views on the importance of his book.
I understand what you mean. Your resolution is an excellent idea.
Is there good money to be made from ghost-writing? Or did you do it for other reasons?
I have ghost-written 'autobiographies' to eat and because I have an abiding interest in people. The chance to interview anyone for a period of 60 hours, to help arrange scenes from their life into a narrative structure can be really fascinating – even if they are an actor or footballer with an ego the size of a small planet.
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