Wednesday, May 23, 2001

 mfinley.com 
"A Ghostwriter's Tale"

by Michael Finley

I had a WFE (Weird Freelance Experience) about six years ago. A New York-based psychiatrist I'll call Ed approached me about ghostwriting a business book for him. Now, I like ghostwriting books, because you can charge a person who wants his name on a book cover much than a book publisher will pay you for your own book. Since I like groceries, I said, "Sure, what's the book about?" And Ed said, "Authenticity."

For a psychiatrist, Ed had a pretty interesting story. He had been a successful bank CEO in the '80s, at the top of his profession. But one day it all came down around his ears. He dropped out of banking for a period of personal reconstruction. He spent about a year wallowing in depression, angry with his firm for blaming him for the bank's problems.

Then, in the rubble of his misery, it dawned on him that his failure was his own fault. He realized he was a phony, one of those Art of War, Winning Through Intimidation, Chainsaw Al guys who got what he wanted, took no prisoners, and had no idea who he was.

Ed became a student of his own demise. Like a prodigal son determined to earn his way back to grace, he went to graduate school, approaching psychiatry with a fascinating focus: the thinking of existential philosophers of the past couple of centuries -- Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, Søren Kierkegaard, and Jean Paul Sartre. Especially Paul Tillich, who said that the core reality of the human soul is the courage to be. This sense of self became Ed's touchstone: you're strong when you are who you are, and not when you’re not. You gotta ... keep it ... real.

Ed's message for the rest of us is that we can't lead, or even communicate reliably with others, unless we do it from the truth that us in us -- our fears, hopes, and self-knowledge. Only when we are able and willing to suffer as yourselves, and let people who come in contact see who we really are, can we have credibility.

I liked Ed, and he seemed to like me. We talked up a storm on the phone, him summarizing key points and offering examples from literature and the cinema, and me as excited as a dog with its head out a car window, happy to be along for the ride.

I studied those same philosophers in college, and knew the gist of what they were saying. And the kernel of his idea -- honesty in the workplace, as opposed the phony-baloney climates we dwell and die in, appealed very much to me. It was like a great first date, and we were charming the crap out of each other (which you must do if you are to be authentic).

I was excited about the project even before Ed's assistant told me that they planned to pay me $40,000 to do it. Let me be real for a moment and say I was authentically pleased at the idea of $40,000. The most I ever made on a book until then was maybe $17,000. 

I couldn't see a downside. Eager to get going on a project that sounded meaningful and promised to be lucrative, I stayed up all night and wrote my take on a key chapter, and e-mailed it to Ed by the dawn's early light.

Then everything soured. Days passed, and no word from Ed. Finally I called his assistant. She hemmed and hawed, and finally said that Ed was put off by my writing style. My first drafts can be pretty feverish, and I suppose this was prime Finley, punctuated with lightning flashes and prophetic pronouncements about the self and the abyss. My ideal client understands that eventual quality requires initial emotion.

But Ed hadn’t told me that he saw the project as nearly academic, footnoted, documented, and above all, respectable. After all, he had his reputation to consider. My style was a little too interesting.

I also learned from the assistant that Ed wanted the book to be 150,000 words long. Which was three times longer than anything I had written to that point. And, he wanted it in four months -- my little short books tended to take 10 months!

The spell was broken. The wedding was off.

I was more than disappointed, I was mad. I wrote Ed a long letter telling him how unfair I thought his appraisal was. To no avail -- Ed has yet to respond.

Eventually, I had to stand up and walk away from all that money, and the cool idea. Only when I did, did I get the joke: that a guy had to hire a ghostwriter to write a book about authenticity. And fired me when I wrote, not like himself, but like me!   

mfinley.com 
_{COPYRIGHT (c) 2001
by MICHAEL FINLEY}

Mike is available to write for your publication or organization right now. Call him at 651-644-4540. Or e-mail him.

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