It became impossible to work on my own literary projects when swamped with commission work for clients. Here’s the three big reasons I quit ghostwriting and a peek and what I’ll be doing going forward.
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If you’ve been here a while, you know a few things about me…
1) I’m pessimistic. (Or, at least more realistic than optimistic).
2) I’m inconsistent with blog posts.
3) I’m pulling myself in a lot of directions at once.
In my daily life I struggle with three main things when it comes to managing time…
- I HATE losing spontaneity in my creative ventures.
- I tend to follow my heart and not my head when it comes to what I manage to get completed.
- My husband relies on me for all domestic duties because he’s constantly on-call for his job and he “brings home the bacon”, per se.
To no one’s surprise, taking on ghostwriting only dwindled my capability to be creative even further.
And at times, I felt like I was wringing my internal muse out like a rag — squeezing the last little bit of creativity clean out of her to hand to someone else.
So, in the interest of transparency, here’s the main three reasons why I’ve said goodbye to ghostwriting, (despite my clients begging me to stay).
#1 My Writing Outgrew My Clients
I began ghostwriting as a way to get my feet wet in the writing industry. I was warned by a few writers that I was selling myself short by giving away my work for someone else to publish, but I didn’t see it that way.
I saw ghostwriting as a paid internship, and I still encourage other people considering getting into ghostwriting to do so! I learned so many things about how stories are written, how tropes are expected to be handled in stories and how to create tight, psychologically sound love stories that are exciting and fun for readers!
Still, I learned a lot of hard lessons too, including how to tell when I’m working with someone who wants me to “dumb down” my work, or someone who wants me to write pure smut under the guise of “romance”. I started to feel like I was required to be a robot, to completely strip my voice from my work, and on top of that, there were times where I would come up with something really beautiful and have to sell it away…
All in all, it became unfulfilling…
#2 The Market Doesn’t Pay As Well Thanks to AI
When I started ghostwriting back in September 2022 the idea that AI was about to sweep the international workforce was unheard of, but now, we all see the reality. With the introduction of AI, people who are not the best at crafting stories (or even, the best at having a rudimentary understanding of the English language) are now able to crank out manuscripts at lightning speed in perfect English, while the story maybe lacking entirely.
I can’t tell you all how many manuscripts I edited that had “4o” at the end of each chapter…
At the same time as this AI influx occurred, there was a mass influx of new “ghostwriters” taking contracts for the lowest of rates, which drove down the overall rates of the contracts entirely. No longer could you write a book for 2, even 3 cents per word — nearly all contracts at this time are 1 cent per word or less!
For the quality I put out, it started to feel like I was giving away my work for free…
#3 I Realized It Was Time To Move On To Publishing My Own Work
I really loved my last client.
He’s a great guy, someone who really loved the work I put out and was consistent with payments.
He was also the first client I had to show me the reviews the romances I had written for him were getting…
All the consistent 5/5 star reviews…
Reviews from readers beaming over the storytelling, the characters…
It was after a handful of these reviews that I looked through my dusty stack of ideas and notebooks — the internal bibles of my extensive storylines that I had put on hold back in 2022 when I began ghostwriting in the first place…
And I realized in that moment that I had achieved what I had set out to do.
I proved myself capable of writing 5/5 star books.
I had proven that I could write multiple books at a time.
That I could write over 15 manuscripts in a year’s time…
And it was in this moment that I decided to put myself first again.
I promptly closed out my last contract, sent out the files that I had been dragging my feet on to send to him, and told him that I was stepping away from ghostwriting for good. He’s still messaging me to come back, but I don’t have it in my heart anymore…
I want to write for me again.
I am still so grateful to myself for taking this on. Ghostwriting the last three years has given me perspective and understanding beyond any “how-to-write” book could’ve. Every manuscript I wrote for a client went to at least one editor, and the vast majority of replies were lessons in what not to do with certain genres, so much so that when I began writing manuscripts so clean the editors had no remarks, it was another sign I was ready for more.
Now I’m excited to take the knowledge I’ve gained and move forward with my own projects!
And I plan to document the entire plan and launch here, for you all to see.
To the people who have been here since the beginning, I can’t tell you what your patronage means to me. The fact you even come and visit my blog at all… it makes me so happy I want to cry.
Fall seems to be my season of change.
Let’s see what comes this year!
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