#ghostwriting — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ghostwriting, aggregated by home.social.
-
Does it Matter Who did the Typing?
Recently, LinkedIn has introduced a ”Seems like AI slop” action that lets you mark posts as… written with the help of AI, I guess?… Many people are openly complaining that AI content is so fake, easy to spot and ”horrible” to witness. But is it really?
As with everything in life, there is no black and white answer or stance on AI ghostwriting.
Let’s start with what we might think is an obvious candidate for 100% AI ”fake: content written by AI agents in response to events or other content they encounter. With no human intervention other than ”write a comment on each new post” or ”write a response in the form of an article to each piece of news on website XYZ”, it would seem obvious to mark this content as ”AI slop”. But why are we so sure we are entitled to do so? Is AI writing some generic answer really that different from a human being reading content and reacting with a basic cliché? Not by much…
Then there is content that AI drafts based on an idea or an outline that you give it. Should that also be marked as AI-generated if the idea was yours? What about if you outline all paragraphs and detail all points you want made? Then AI would just execute. Whose content is it then?
Ghostwriting has been a thing for longer than we might think. From being out in the open, for example in the case of celebrities who ”write” books about their lives, to being hidden in plain sight, in the case of authors who have produced a huge number of novels compared to the average and even down to IT books co-authored by programmers who aren’t even named on the back cover.
If we have historically accepted that authorship doesn’t necessarily mean physically typing every sentence, why have we suddenly decided that a human typing is the benchmark now?
Why are we so quick to join a camp and be with it or against it? Things are moving fast, yes, but does it actually mean we should be just as quick to judge?
Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether AI was involved. Maybe it should be whether there was a human thought worth expressing in the first place.
#ai #authorship #ghostwriting #human #megabytereflection #techtrends #thought -
I'll write it myself someday is a polite way of saying never. Someday is not a day on the calendar. The conditions that stopped you for the last ten years are stopping you now, and will next year too: the job, the family, the lawn. Life does not pause for the book. Here is why someday is where books die.
-
Retrain or be replaced. There is no third option. Every reason you are telling yourself you do not have to learn AI right now is a reason previous generations told themselves about the Industrial Revolution, the typewriter, the personal computer, and the internet.
-
Social media makes it easier than ever to broadcast raw emotion, and after charged events thousands post videos of themselves crying, yelling, even making threats. Expressing emotion is natural, but putting deeply personal reactions online carries consequences most people do not consider until too late, because digital content is effectively permanent. Here is how to protect your personal life.
#bookstodon #ghostwriting #amwriting
https://thewritingking.com/think-before-you-post-protecting-yo…
-
By fourteen the gap between what church expected and what my brain could do had become unbearable, so I left. In December 2024 I was baptized, having finally heard a version with room in it for people like me.
-
Schreibmaschine, Textverarbeitung, jetzt KI – aufhalten lässt sich das nicht. Reden, Marketingtexte: KI schreibt meist mit. Aber bitte nicht blind vertrauen. Warum Redenschreiber, Marketingabteilungen und wir alle KI als Werkzeug behandeln sollten, nicht als Autopilot. #KI #Ghostwriting #Marketing
http://stefanpfeiffer.blog/2026/08/14/ki-beim-texten/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social
-
Markets do not have perfect information. A buyer cannot directly measure your expertise before hiring you, cannot compare your methodology to a competitor's, cannot tell whether your twenty years produced deeper insight than someone's ten. What they can evaluate is authority signals: a published book, speaking credentials, a visible body of work. That gap is why skilled professionals stay underpaid.
-
I write up to 12,000 words a day and have finished whole handbooks in single sessions, and the flip side of that output is a crash that can flatten me for days if I do not manage it. Most burnout advice treats it as a motivation problem. It is not.
-
Mystery and thriller together make up roughly 35 percent of all adult fiction sales, the largest commercial category after romance. This is no puzzle-enthusiast niche; it is a massive industry of fast, paying readers. Most advice treats mystery as a puzzle to assemble. Here is how to write one that actually keeps readers guessing.
-
People contact me for help with their books, and about half ask for the wrong service: someone who needs a coach asks for ghostwriting, someone who needs a ghostwriter asks for coaching. The confusion makes sense, both involve a professional helping you produce a book, but the relationship, process, and result differ completely.
-
This week I measured my own site against the raw server logs and found that most of what I had been calling an audience was never a person at all.
-
Cosmetic surgery patients walk into the consultation carrying anxiety almost no other medical specialty has to handle: body image, social stigma, fear of looking worse, fear of looking obviously done, and the awareness that they are buying a permanent change with their own money. The book is the asset that does the trust-building work before they ever walk in.
-
Every chef who decides to write a book wants to write a cookbook, and the cookbook is the wrong book. Recipes are a commodity, the market is saturated, and the cookbook does almost none of the work a chef actually needs their book to do.
-
The people who can verify your stories are getting older, and some are already gone, the brother who was there, the college roommate, the mother who knows the family history you never asked about. A memoir is not just your memory; it is a reconstruction that pulls from everyone present, and every year you wait, that list shrinks.
-
Political books that change elections do not read like policy papers; they read like a conversation with someone who understands what you are going through and has a plan. The policy is there, but wrapped in story, conviction, and a voice that addresses the reader directly. I have ghostwritten 54+ books where persuasion is the whole point.
-
I did not set out to be a writer. I set out to understand my grandfather, and the writing followed, more than forty years ago. Since then I have published 113+ books, ghostwritten 54, written dozens of novels, and built a career that runs entirely on words. But the path was never a straight line.
-
Making a reader laugh is hard; making them cry is harder; making them afraid using nothing but words is the hardest thing a fiction writer can attempt. Fear is physical, heart rate up, breathing changed, and triggering that through marks on a page in a quiet room takes a different skill set than any other genre.
-
In 2013, 3D printing was going to dissolve the manufacturing industry: everyone would have a printer at home, you would download a hammer instead of buying one, and global supply chains would obsolete themselves in five years. None of that happened. What happened is that 3D printing quietly found its real lane.
https://thewritingking.com/what-3d-printing-taught-me-about-ai/
-
The biggest mistake ghostwriters make is starting too soon. Before I write a single word of someone's book, I interview them across multiple recorded sessions, more than twenty prepared questions plus all the follow-up. I am not trying to learn their field the way they know it; I am capturing their position on it, their language, their stories.
-
Thurs. July 16, 2026: Time to Venture Out
image courtesy of No-longer-here from PixabayThursday, July 16, 2026
Waxing Moon
Pluto, Mercury, Neptune Retrograde
Hazy and warm
You can read the latest on the garden over at Gratitude & Growth.
Yesterday morning, I caught up on some email. I realized I hadn’t yet sent my UK producer the requested materials for the next radio production, so I got that out the door, and caught up on a few other things. I tried to make as best use of time as possible before I had to move out of the office because it was too hot. Working in another room means running off the laptop battery, which doesn’t last very long. The manufacturer claims 6-8 hours, but it’s really closer to 2. And I can’t really plug in anywhere in the living room when the fans and coolers are running,
It does force me to focus and then take breaks, though.
I’m getting ready to prepare an LOI for a company who’s looking for something else, but I have an idea that might be worth their while. It would be remote (of course) with occasional trips to their location about an hour away in VT. So that’s on the list for next week, as is an idea I have for Assets4Artists. That idea is in a very embryonic stage, and I want to spin it out so it’s a real proposal. I was working away, thinking, “I need xyz, I wish A4A had that” and I heard Briana’s voice in my head saying, “well, tell us what you need and let’s see what we can do” so I’ll put together a polished pitch and see if it works for them. As they expand, they’re shifting some of their focus, and I think this idea would help build on that, while giving a throughline to the foundation they already have.
I refused to let myself work on any of those things, other than scribbling a few notes so I wouldn’t lose the idea completely, because I had a deadline to meet.
I struggled with the ghostwriting, trying to smooth out the logic and keep it all working properly. I managed to get it off a little after 5 PM. I start the next assignment today, which is due on July 29, although I might get it in a little early, since a good portion of it is already sitting in my brain.
The haze from the wildfires was eerie. The temperatures didn’t get as high as predicted, but the air was heavy, humid, and smoky. I was only 77F when I woke up this morning, though, and I have the fans running to get it cooler. It should only get up to 85 today, and then be in the low 80’s for the weekend, cooling off at night.
On today’s agenda: supposedly online meditation group, the usual Thursday errands, Freelance Friends chat, turning around the edits on the short story (biggest priority), getting out the script materials that should have gone out yesterday and did not, working on the commission pitch, working on the radio series, and starting the next ghostwriting. That’s rather a big list, so we’ll see how much I can actually get done. I have a feeling I’ll work on the commission pitch through the weekend, which is fine.
I changed my mind about one set of script materials. What I was originally going to send needs more thought and work. I have another piece from which I can send sample pages, and then finish a draft if they want to work on it.
Have a good one!
#freelance #ghostwriting #ideas #proposals #theatre #writing -
An edge case is any situation outside the pattern an AI was trained on, and machine-learning systems are structurally incapable of handling them, because the system has never seen them and has no judgment about what to do when it does not know.
-
Straight answers on ghostwriters quietly using AI, the contract language that protects you, and my written AI policy.
-
Fri. June 26, 2026: All About the Art
Image courtesy Uwe Baumann from PixabayFriday, June 26, 2026
Waxing Moon
Pluto Retrograde
It’s Friday, yay! And doesn’t June 26, 2026 look pretty on the page?
One of my most enjoyable daily reads is HYPERALLERGIC, which is a mixture of art, culture, and politics. Articles in that publication have led me to some very interesting new-to-me discoveries.
An online acquaintance recommend radio.garden, and I am becoming obsessed with that. You spin the virtual globe and can listen to radio from anywhere in the world. The same individual also recommended photopea.com, a free online photo editor. I’ve just started exploring it. It seems to genuinely be free for the different elements (and is supposed to be a solid alternative to Photoshop), unlike BeFunky and some of the other photo editors that started free and then shrank their offerings to force people into subscriptions.
It’s always interesting to explore what’s out there, and decide whether it’s a useful tool, something fun for downtime, or just a time suck. While I’m trying to slow my own pace to be something more enjoyable instead of being frantic all the time, I also don’t want to mire myself in time sucks when I could be involved in things that are more interesting and enjoyable.
As far as tools go, my rule of thumb is: if it takes longer to set up and maintain the system than to do the task, I do the task and dump the system. Systems can streamline. They can also be a procrastination tool.
Online meditation group was good this morning. I thought this was our last one before summer break, but we will meet next week, so I guess I have one more week of it.
After breakfast, I did the usual round of errands. Did a light grocery shop, ran some other errands, did a drop-off/pick-up at the library. Home, hauled everything up the stairs, put it away. Had some other things that needed attention, so I didn’t get much writing done.
I had to miss the Freelance Friends chat (but caught up later in the afternoon).
I made a salad using two kinds of lettuce and spinach (CSA box), carrots (CSA box), white radishes (CSA box) and cherry tomatoes (store bought). It never ceases to amaze me how much higher the flavor levels are with items from the CSA.
The session on ghostwriting hosted by the Authors Guild Foundation was excellent. Since it was about “breaking in” I was worried that it wouldn’t have information specifically useful to me, but it did. It gave me quite a bit to think about (in a good way).
I signed the anthology contract and returned it.
I changed into appropriate Real People clothes and headed out just before 5 PM. First, I headed to open studios at MASS MoCA. I caught up with a few locals before starting the studio tour. Everyone’s work was interesting and very different from each other. I spent some time with the artist who was in the studio I’ve had for the Boiler House Residency for the last two years. He’s a painter using really interesting techniques, and we also chatted about how great that particular studio is. One of the other artists is doing quilt/textile work, and we just started chatting like we’d known each other for years! They are moving to Rhode Island in the next few months, and once they get settled, I want to introduce them to a friend of mine in upstate NY who is a textile artist. Plus keeping in touch on projects, because it feels like we’ve known each other all our lives. In the other building, there was a really interesting artist from Puerto Rico who shipped sand from various beaches in PR to the studio and works on sand sculptures in the shape of targets, exploring the damage done by ruins and overbuilding and erosion.
After I made the studio rounds, I walked across town to FutureLabs for the closing of this month’s show. It is a project in response to the Venice Biennale that’s been going on for about 15 years. A group of artists travels to Venice for the show, and this year, they had a response to it, and these are the pieces created. They also did a book signing (they created a book from various pieces) and performed a poem in the street (and filmed it, so we could watch it). The exhibit itself contained photos and other works in response to their experiences, and also several garments built from all the tote bags given away. It was fun and very, very clever. We met some of the new associate members, too.
The next First Friday (July 3) is when the next show opens, by two of the artists in the group I know better than some of the other artists. The following week, four artists I know who work with natural elements have a show opening at Hotel Downstreet. So July will be filled with art and poetry, which suits me just fine.
Home, cooked a Thai chicken and basil dish using the basil from the CSA box. It was yummy. I’ve made that recipe before. I have several FOOD & WINE cookbooks I’ve accumulated through the years, but this was on the free cart in the Williamstown Library (a discard) a couple of years back. I grabbed it. It’s built around herbs and spices, and the recipes are really good. I might cook my way through the book in these next months.
Read a bit in the evening. Up early this morning. It was pouring when I woke up, so I worried I would have to scupper the trip to the laundromat. It let up in time for me to go, drizzled a bit while I was there, let up while I came home, and started pouring again about 10 minutes after I’d hauled everything back up the stairs. Good timing!
On today’s agenda: folding and putting away laundry, working on the radio series, working on a piece of flash fiction that has to go out early next week, working on BETTING MAN, maybe a little ghostwriting. I plan to use the sugar snap peas from the CSA box for dinner tonight.
Tomorrow, I hope to get in some work on BETTING MAN, and, if the light is good, some sewing. It’s supposed to be hot this weekend, so I’ll play it by ear. Sunday, hopefully more sewing, and then there’s a celebration for Bear & Bee Bookshop’s 5th anniversary in the afternoon, so I’ll head down to that.
Have a great weekend, and we’ll catch up next week – the day after the Full Moon and the day after Mercury turns retrograde. Buckle up, my buttercups!
#art #CSA #freelance #ghostwriting #life #painting #writing -
Thurs. June 11, 2026: Obstacles
image courtesy of Siggy Nowak from PixabayThursday, June 11, 2026
Waning Moon
Pluto Retrograde
Cloudy, hot, humid
You can read the latest on the garden over at Gratitude and Growth.
As I tried to settle into my scriptwriting yesterday morning, Willa kept tapping me on the knee and mrrping, so I had to stop and play with her for 20 minutes. A good break for both of us, I guess. I am Willa’s spare human, and I guess she’s decided I have use beyond filling her breakfast bowl. I am the primary human for Tessa, Charlotte, and Bea, and they keep me on my toes, too.
I worked on the 3rd script for the UK producer. I layered in some more sound cues, because I had a couple of stretches were there was too much dialogue without sound cues. (The usual measure is one cue approximately every 30 seconds, or half page, and it has to either drive plot or reveal character). I got another page and half done. I stopped, because I have to build a tarot reading specific to this play, and it has to fit into about a page/a minute to a minute and a half’s worth of airtime. That means I have to build the entire reading, but pick the cards to discuss that drive the plot best. This happens at the halfway point of the piece. I figured out the twist at the end, so I have to work these scenes out so it drives us there. I decided to write the final scene with the plot twist first (about 4 pages), and then build this tarot scene and the next scene to get us there over the next couple of days. I have just under 5 pages of airtime left for the tarot scene and the scene after that will lead into this final scene with the twist. 5 pages written today was a good morning’s work on it. I hoped to finish those middle scenes today, then let it sit for a couple of days, revise it, and get it out early next week, but that is not happening.
I felt really good about all that, took a short break, and switched over to the ghostwriting, which is when my day fell apart. I could not get it done. This particular assignment has been problematical since day one. When I got these notes back, I was told “it’s so close.” It’s not. As I implement the notes, it’s a major restructuring.
I took a break around 4 PM to walk down to Savvy Hive and get my CSA box. It was a little hot and humid, but still nice to get away from the desk and moving. We have so many greens! So much kale! And more Bok Choy, which is always a joy.
I needed a bit of recovery time when I got back, but I heated up leftovers for dinner, and then went back to work on the ghostwriting. I gave up around 11 PM, completely discouraged and disheartened, and told them I couldn’t get it to them today. It’ll have to be tomorrow. I don’t know HOW it will get done, but too bad for me.
I took a shower, and was in bed around midnight. I’d run the fan in my bedroom while I was working, so it wasn’t unbearable, but a little more humid than I’d like. I managed to get some sleep.
Up at the usual time, morning routine, feeling literally sick at the thought of tackling the ghostwriting assignment today. But it has to get done. It’s the same issues that come up every few months, and they are burning me out. Discussing them gets nods and smiles and suggested solutions, but a few months later, here we are again.
If I could detach myself from caring about the work, I’d be in a much better position, but that’s not possible. If I didn’t care, I couldn’t do it at all.
We all have bad days at work, no matter what the profession. Yesterday was one of mine. It wouldn’t be a genuine depiction of a writing life if the bad days weren’t included.
There’s also a lot of other stuff that has to get done today. I thought I’d be clear of the ghostwriting assignment (because when I’m told “it’s so close” I don’t expect to have to basically throw out three quarters of it and redo it within 48 hours which includes the kind of research that takes most authors 4-6 months), but I’m not, so I have to figure out how to juggle the ghostwriting and all the meetings and all the errands, none of which can be moved. I’m going to try to look at the meetings as welcome, necessary breaks instead of getting frantic that I should be using that time on the ghostwriting.
We didn’t have the promised rain yesterday, so it’s muggy, but at least it’s not supposed to be as hot. We’ll see.
Online meditation group was cancelled today, so I can get out the door for my errands early. It’s the usual round of grocery store, library, and whatever else needs attention. There a Freelance Friends meeting at noon, a library trustees meeting at 5:30, and then a library cohort meeting online at 8.
So I better get going.
#freelance #ghostwriting #radioWriting #structure #writing -
Wed. June 10, 2026: That Old Time Radio
image courtesy of Przemysław Krzak from PixabayWednesday, June 10, 2026
Waning Moon
Pluto Retrograde
Cloudy, hazy, humid
Another mid-week.
When I returned from taking out the garbage yesterday morning, Willa shot out the front door. Fortunately, I always look down going through doorways and caught her before she’d gotten more than a few feet. She was racing around, full of pep back inside, so I changed my plans and gave her a good, solid playtime to wear her out.
She has no idea she is nearly 14 years old. She thinks she is still 2.
I did a final polish on the radio series pitch and got that out the door. Whenever I send off a big project, I’m always ready for a nap. The adrenalin crash always hits fast.
However, I still had stuff to do.
That Thing closed down blocks of businesses in Manhattan who depended on the income from a major sports event, just so he could be an asshole and take a nap. It also negates the whole “ballroom is necessary.” He was booed right out of town, trying to save face with “scheduling conflicts.” That Thing shouldn’t have mucked everything up (and guess what, the Knicks lost). There’s a war on that he ignores except to lie about it. I’m tired of the grifting.
Tried to hunker down and get to work. Got a response an hour after I sent the radio series pitch from the producer saying he liked the pitch and wanted to look at the pilot. So I did another polish on that, and sent it off.
By then, it was almost lunchtime, and I hadn’t yet made the salmon salad! I did that, it was yummy (used CSA ingredients in it), and then took a break, which meant I was late getting back to tackle the ghostwriting.
Then, I heard back from the producer, who had great, specific notes on the radio play I sent him right before lunch, and is interested in producing the first season of the show (10 episodes). I’m excited. Contract terms sound reasonable, and we’ll see if we can get this done. Until everything is signed, sealed and delivered on all our parts, I can’t go into detail, but it’s a great opportunity, doing just about my favorite thing in the world. It’s not a lot of money, but it is paid (although I probably won’t be paid until each episode goes live, which would be at the earliest next year sometime). It’s not a WGA contract (WGA covers radio, rather than the Dramatists Guild), but their NY rep has always been helpful and supportive and encouraged me to ask questions on my road from smaller productions to WGA productions, so I have that support. A colleague of mine has worked with this company before, and had a great experience. There are several points in the process where it could fall apart, even after contracts are finalized, but that’s the way it goes.
Good notes are so important. I’ve found that there are three kinds of notes: the ego note, the I-would-write-it-this-way note, and the value note. The first two are useless. The ego note is the note-giver inserting themselves to put their fingerprints on a project. This happens most often in film or television, where you have a lot of people throughout the process trying to justify their jobs. There are lots of parodies of working in the business where execs give these types of notes, and you can bet that someone in the writers’ room had someone say something as off-the-wall as they scripted. It usually has very little to do with the premise, tone, and drive of the show, and more to do with the latest notion of what’s trending.
The I-would-write-it-this-way note comes in every discipline (far too often in writing groups from unpublished aspirants), and it’s the note giver liking the premise but wanting it done their way. Then write it, hon. It won’t be a copy. It’ll be your vision of the premise, and that’s perfectly valid. But don’t expect me to rewrite to your specifications if you’re not my employer. Now, in something like the ghostwriting, it’s my job to deliver what they want in their world the way they want it. That’s why they pay me, and that’s a whole different animal. In something I’ve created, unless that person is paying me, that kind of note is too similar to the ego note to be helpful.
The value note is fantastic because of the precision and because it strengthens the piece within its world and vision. I’m lucky that I have Trusted Readers who give value notes, as do my Boiler House Poets colleagues. (I’m telling you, poets give great script notes because they are so precise with language). Those value notes, from Trusted Readers, help a piece land a contract. Then you go through a whole different set of notes during development, rehearsal, and production. So when I get a value note from a producer or a director or a dramaturg during the process, I’m always delighted, because that gives me something tangible to strengthen the piece. There are plenty of people on a production who may give the first two types of notes, too, and then you have to sift and have conversations about whose note to take. The point is, a value note is a great opportunity to strengthen the piece.
I still have another script in mind for this producer’s mid-July deadline for a different project. I’m on the fence about whether to continue with that, since I have the series and another piece under consideration with them, and this mid-July deadline is slightly out of my wheelhouse. The piece is a stretch. I still have to finish a script for the UK producer and get it out the door before the end of this month. So I guess my End of Play pages are all going to be radio, not stage. Which is fine by me.
Right after the back and forth on the radio series, I got the next set of notes from the ghostwriting client. Those are very clear and do-able, and they’re excited about what I did with the concept, and where I see it going for the next three books. I’m still wrestling the notes on the other project, which I should have done either late today or first thing tomorrow. Then, I have to turn around this other set – so, basically, 40K ghostwriting revisions in about a week, and then I can start tackling the radio series, while juggling the other two scripts and the Llewellyn article. I’ll do a few pages of a non-series script per day, and a few pages of the series script. Once I get the non-series scripts out the door, I’ll turn my attention to the Llewellyn article (which isn’t due until September 1, but I need to get it out the door in August for my own schedule). Somewhere in there, BETTING MAN has to get back into the mix, along with the I WILL BE DIFFERENT revisions and the final push on ANGEL HUNT. I’ll figure it out. It’s good to have a summer where I can do what I love.
When it gets too hot to work at home, I’ll pack up and work at the college library.
Good thing my schedule settles down after this week on the out-and-about front! Because June, July, and August are going to be about scriptwriting and ghostwriting and Nina Bell. After I get these two ghostwriting projects out the door, I have 5 more on my contract with this client (3 for one series, 2 for the other).
Yesterday was supposed to be the luckiest day of the year astrologically with Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer, opening doors to desired paths, so I was happy with the way things shook out.
However, one also has to go through the door and deal with what’s on the other side. If you stand in the doorway, nothing changes. You have to take action on the opportunity, knowing there are no guarantees.
So we’ll see. I’m excited and cautiously optimistic. Now, I have to buckle down and do the work.
Heated up leftovers for dinner, read in the evening. I should have done more ghostwriting, but I was out of steam by that point.
Slept reasonably well, up at the normal time. Morning routine was fine. I have a feeling I’ll be noodling the radio pieces in my morning free-write.
Today, I’ll do some script pages in the morning, but the bulk of the day is about the ghostwriting, the other 10-11K I didn’t get done on Monday. I have to take a break around 4 to trot down to Savvy Hive to get my CSA box. Greens, greens, so many greens this week!
The next few days are supposed to be hot, so I will adjust as needed. Yesterday was just a perfect summer day – clear blue sky, not too hot or humid. Not as hot as predicted. I’m hoping the entire week will turn out to be not as hot as predicted.
Have a good one!
#books #fiction #ghostwriting #notes #radio #scriptwriting #writing
