Ghost in the machine
PLUS: NZC sends a pointed message in The Week That Was, and Razor needs to get the memo in The Weekend That Will Be ($)
After the frenetic, occasionally baffling and hyper-engaging fortnight-plus that was the Olympics, The Bounce has opted for a change of pace to complete the week1.
My hope is that you found Heath Mills’ essay calling for big changes in the way the International Olympic Committee distributes its abundant riches at the very least thought-provoking.
I also hope you enjoyed the “A Conversation With My Family” extract from Samuel Whitelock: View from the Second Row.
With the latter in mind, I called for questions regarding the ghostwriting process. I’ve been involved in six (soon to be seven) published books now and only one has mine as the most prominent name on the cover.
It’s a process that I believe is more a ‘discipline’ than an ‘art’, although I’m sure some of the best practitioners of it would disagree. Thanks a million for the questions and huge apologies if yours did not make it. There were several that were similarly themed, so I gave priority to those who got in first, but I appreciated them all. The two book winners are announced at the end.
GHOSTWRITING AMA
How hard is it to press a very recently retired player like Sam into revealing genuine and insightful thoughts regarding difficult times like the ones endured with Fozzy? - Nick
The interest for me here Nick, is your use of the word “press”. That’s quite a journalistic way of looking at it and yes, if I was writing for the Herald or Stuff and was charged with writing a career overview on Sam, I would have been “pressing” for those details. With a book, the thing you have to remember at each and every turn is that it is the subject’s story and in broad terms if you’re pressing them into areas where they don’t want to go, then it momentarily becomes your story, not theirs.
Having said that, Sam knew as well as anybody that the subject of the Foster-Robertson debate would have to be broached and he wanted to stay true to himself in that he had genuine respect and affection for both men. I’m not sure you really even have to read between the lines to ascertain that his biggest disappointment in the whole kerfuffle was the players were made to feel like it was their call, and even contributed to that themselves, when it should never have been the case.
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I’m interested in how you view the relationship between writer and subject, and whether it is a tightrope between building rapport and a bond that earns trust (and potentially more offers as an author), but also staying neutral/incisive enough to produce the content that the reader wants (ie, the provocative stuff). I understand this would be hard with people still connected to their industry, potentially not as much with Carl Hayman or someone who has very little to lose. - Dean
In a process like this, how much do you get to push into getting the juicy content, the real yarns we don't hear about? Is there the ability to dig deep and pull out some real sizzle? - Ben
Did he cough? - Dave
Again, a very good question Dean and the last point also plays into what Nick was saying about the difficulties with those who are “recently retired”.
You’re right about Carl Hayman in that he was coming to it with the benefit of distance and could be unflinching without compromising his future in the game. It is worth noting that Carl’s shots were fired at himself as much as anybody and some of the most powerful material in the book was the contemplation of his problematic and dangerous relationship with alcohol.
Not only did Sam not have the types of issues Carl faced on a personal level, but he will likely stay connected to the game, and possibly at a high level depending on his designs on a coaching career. As much as I was trying to live inside his head while I was writing his story, I don’t know how much that potential future informed the telling of his story. I suspect not a great deal as Sam is nothing if not honest.
The trust comes when you start sharing the material you have written and they see it is a faithful representation of their thoughts.
As to what Dean describes as the “provocative stuff”, Ben describes as the “juicy content” and Dave labels “coughing”, I suspect you’re all referencing the potential changing of the coach a year out from the World Cup. I don’t think I’m talking out of school when I say Sam wasn’t massively comfortable talking about it, but probably not for the reasons you’d think. For him it was never a matter of who he thought should be coach and who shouldn’t, it was who should make that decision - and it definitely wasn’t the players.
He stayed true to that message from our first conversation to the last.
Funnily enough, there was one bit of juice that I wanted (for purely selfish reasons), but I couldn’t extract it. I really wanted to know what he truly, deeply felt about the officiating during last year’s World Cup final but he was utterly non-committal because it was irrelevant to him. They, the All Blacks, knew what the flashpoints were going to be with the refs before they got there, they practised for all eventualities and had multiple opportunities to win that game under their own steam, whether they played the bulk of the match with 14 men or not.
It was meaningless to him as to whether the refereeing team got it spot on or not and I think that speaks to his mentality and what helps separate him from us mere mortals, because I know it would chew away at me.
I had a sneaking admiration for him for brushing my inquiry (although there’s a part of me that still would like to know).
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What did you do differently with this book compared to the first, or others you have done of this type in the past? Was that due to the subject this time, or how you have developed your skills, or a bit of both? - Muzz
I thought long and hard about this question. It was a useful exercise for myself because in no way do I purport to be a master of the discipline, but at the same time there are areas I think I’ve improved upon.
The first biography I ghosted was former New Zealand fast bowler Shane Bond’s Looking Back. I was green as grass and definitely treated it as more of a journalistic process. The end of his career was wrapped in political intrigue and perhaps I wanted to put too much focus on this and not enough on the evergreen topics, forgetting that books stay on shelves for a long time; long after the news of the day passes.
He was a good subject to work with on my first book, though, because he was brutally honest. I remember sending him the first chapter and a few days later getting a nice note or text back saying that it was great and exactly what he was after — with a few tweaks. Full of confidence I raced through the next chapter and sent it off expecting to get a similar response. Instead I got a call in short time that went something like: “Hey, that was shit and needs a lot of work.”
He would have been right.
The subjects are all very different and have very different reasons for wanting to do a biography. That always has to be somewhere in your thinking.
In short, I think I’m better at evaluating the big picture.
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When ghostwriting in the first person, do you try to get “in character” of the subject or are you writing verbatim and adding literary touches? - Rich
Thanks Rich. I break the process down into four parts: the interviewing, the research and fact-checking, the writing, and the fixing/ editing. This question gets to the nub of the writing part.
Unless it’s scripted speech, nobody really talks in a way you’d like to read, so the key is to turn the thoughts of the subject into mostly well-constructed sentences without losing their “voice”. That in a nutshell is the writing part of ghostwriting. There are times when you’re writing and trying to explain a concept or a place and you naturally fall back on your own pet phrases or words, but then you read it back and say to yourself, “Would Sam/ Carl/ Shane/ Brendon ever describe a wind as a ‘gentle zephyr’?” and adjust accordingly.
So to answer your question (in a way that appears like a non-answer but actually isn’t), you are neither writing verbatim nor adding literary touches. You’re taking raw thoughts and cultivating them in a way that is hopefully both readable and true to the subject.
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To get a sports autobiography you have to be a good player. But some guys are elite. Sam is elite. As part of the writing process are you able to tease out what that difference is? When you’ve spent a bit of time with both types can you recognise the differences? - Richard
Great question Richard and with Sam I think there’s a magic alchemy between environmental, intrinsic and genetic factors. Don’t underestimate the environment.
Look at the household Sam grew up in: two sports-mad parents who worked their arses off to grow their land asset and to improve their productivity of the farm. Into that world came four boys, close in age, with a whole heap of space to play in and who were encouraged to throw balls around and compete against each other. That’s a pretty potent cocktail already: role models with an impeccable work ethic who encourage play — and mates to play with on hand at every turn.
Combine that with Sam’s genetics — both his grandfathers were well over 1.90m tall — and you have a kid blessed with environmental and genetic advantages.
Then he gets to a high school where his hostel master demands he sets (in writing) challenging personal goals and holds him accountable to that. That’s an environmental factor again.
The final part of the equation is all Sam. That’s the desire to be great and the confidence to keep setting goals that might at first glance appear out of reach. To never settle for okay. To be single-minded enough to remove the elements that don’t help you achieve goals. The greats have a burning internal desire to keep getting better. To be able to accept failure and get back up. You could hear it in Sam when he talked about how hard he had to work to get over some potentially crippling self-doubt when he first got to Canterbury. That’s all the stuff that can’t be taught or explained away by having a big, green backyard and brothers with hard edges.
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Sporting biographies are a well-trodden path in NZ, particularly for All Blacks.
How do you set about creating a narrative for the book which will be genuine to the subject and their story, avoid the cliches of being just another All Blacks story, and be interesting and appealing for an audience? Do you go straight for the obvious headlines from their career or build to it naturally? In the case of Sam Whitelock, it would be tempting to spend a lot of time on the Ian Foster controversy but that feels unfair to Sam — how do you handle that?
Also, is there much thought/value given to appealing to an audience made up of people that aren’t necessarily sports fans?
Olly
As a ghost-writer is there a temptation to (or a challenge not to) zero in on moments you see as significant in Sam’s rugby career, but which he may not be all that important to him?
Brian
These are both good and similar questions and without wanting to fob them off, they probably go more to the heart of the relationship between the subject and publisher than they do subject and ghostwriter. In my case I came in after the parameters, for want of a better word, had been set.
I’ve written three biographies and ghosted a mid-career exposition around the explosion of T20 cricket (Brendon McCullum). As I mentioned above, all had different reasons for deciding to do a book.
Sam’s primary motivation was to provide a ‘living’ document of his life and his career and explain how family was the root cause for everything that was good in his life. To your points above, adding to pub-leaner debates wasn’t really of much interest to him, nor was getting phlegm off his chest, because in truth he hadn’t collected much over his 15-year professional career.
So, in short, yes there is a temptation to drill into parts of his career that I might find quite pointed and interesting, but you must keep coming back to the central fact: it is his book, not yours and while it is a (paid) privilege to help write and shape it, to tease out details and occasionally go into areas they’re not comfortable with, you’re abusing that privilege if you then try to dictate the narrative.
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Thanks again everyone. I could have given the two books to anyone really, so in the end I threw a dart and it landed on Muzz W and Dean W. A good day for Ws. Please fire me your postal addresses via email @ dc.thebounce@gmail.com, putting “Prize Winner” in the subject line so I don’t accidentally skip over them.
I’m feeling quite charitable today given this news (pictured below), so maybe we’ll try to get HarperCollins to agree to one more giveaway, certainly in time for some Xmas stocking filler ideas.
