a love letter to accidents

and how my ghostwriting career was a very happy accident

“How did you get into ghostwriting?”

Out of all questions, this is the one I’m asked most frequently. By far. On the internet. In client interviews. At parties. On dates.

“It’s a long story,” I usually say. “But it was mainly an accident.”

The happiest accident I’ve ever known.

So perhaps it’s time to tell the story, stem to stern.

This is how I became a ghostwriter. Completely on accident.

maybe this is my stupidest edit to date

I wanted to be an actor. So I did everything I could to be one. At least everything I thought I could considering I was a teenager at a college prep school thinking a conservatory training would be my ticket the big time.

Four years of training and too many roles as moms later, I no longer wanted to be an actor. I still like acting, but I’m invitation only which means I never act because everyone either forgets I act or they’re thankful I quit in the first place.

But I loved theatre. I still wanted to be a part of it. And thanks to a spur of the moment entry to a ten-minute play festival, I started my playwriting journey six months after I graduated college.

Although, that’s not entirely true. I did get a creative writing minor. Because I could. Because I loved writing. As a hobby. It was something fun to do, a way for me to channel all the ideas my swirling brain always seemed to come up with.

I leaned into that. If acting wasn’t my path in theatre, maybe writing was.

Photo by Hamish Kale on Unsplash

I wrote stories with bittersweet endings. Because happily ever afters weren’t serious, were they? No, they belonged to 11 year olds who were gifted typewriters from their fathers who had tremendous crushes on boys who had never talked to them and needed a place to take out all that unseen energy.

Happily ever afters were immature.

But still, I thought about them all the time. In fact, as a child I cut my teeth on happy endings.

In class, I would daydream about love stories that ended sealed with a kiss after a series of dramatic twists and turns. I would write the beginnings of stories…and then quickly write all the most exciting parts before abandoning the story all together.

I still have a folder started some time in middle school of all the stories I started cobbling together in my teen years.

That’s not really how I started though.

Because it was so much easier to start in worlds already created for me with characters that had built in flaws and dreams.

That’s right. I started with fanfiction.

I started when I was eleven maybe. Just writing stories in script format based on media I enjoyed watching.

And then I found out that people on the internet did that. They shared it. And it wasn’t usually in script format, no, it was like…a story. That could be in a book if not for the intellectual property issue.

I started writing fanfiction to be shared. I finished a couple of them too. They are still on the internet. I will NOT be directing you toward them.

The point is, I wrote and finished stories back in the day. And I never thought much about it.

Even my freshman year of college, I began writing a love story, an epic set in a turn-of-the-century (the 20th century) small town in the south where a Lithuanian doctor goes to fulfill a post to treat the citizens and of course falls in love with the community leader’s daughter who is of course promised to another man. I got about thirty pages in without skipping around and promptly abandoned the piece. It was tentatively titled, The Lagoon at Barn Cove and I was pretty obsessed with it, I won’t lie.

In fact, I found the notebook in which I found inspiration for the story.

It’s completely falling apart, but nearly full which, for a neurodivergent like me, is quite an accomplishment.

However, I had other stories to focus on and other ways of telling it to learn. I didn’t write again with any regularity until after I graduated, save for my creative writing minor.

I was much more satisfied writing than acting. That was due in large part to body dysmorphia that built up during my time in college. I liked not being judged for how I looked, but for the content of my mind.

Like a fish to water (I’m a fan of idioms and cliches, sue me), I started my playwriting career. I joined a theatre company. I lived and breathed theatre, balancing company duties, writing, and surviving as a substitute teacher.

I had readings all over the country, almost won an award here and there, and then had the illustrious promise of a production.

I had been developing my play littlespace, or the daddy play since summer of 2018. And finally, finally, I was going to see my play be produced and performed to its fullest in May of 2020.

Yes. May. Of 2020.

The world shut down in March and any semblance of reality that we had planned for was out the window.

Photo by Robin Jonathan Deutsch on Unsplash

The production was canceled. The theatre company disbanded. I took a job assistant teaching a kindergarten class to get by. Then, I was lucky to receive a commission from my alma mater for a Zoom play, an adaptation of Dracula which I am still planning to rewrite (one day…).

Once that was finished, I…didn’t know what to do with myself.

I didn’t write for about two months, which was exceptionally unusual for me. I mean, I was a writer. Playwright first, anything else to do with my survival second.

I mean, it was 2020. Everything was survival. Visits to the grocery store were survival, walks around the neighborhood were survival, game nights with friends over Zoom were survival.

And in that time, I learned writing was survival too.

Because those two months without it were dismal. A kind of breaking down.

There was a problem, though: I didn’t know how to write again. What to write. For two years and change, I was a playwright. But what was the point of writing plays in a climate where the only theatre that existed were productions with aggressive budgets to adhere to covid protocols or Zoom productions.

You can only do so many Zoom plays before you hate yourself and that’s a fact.

I had no ideas for plays. No reason, in my book at the time, to write them.

So…I did as my middle school self would.

I started writing fanfiction.

YES, again. NO, I will not tell you what fandom. And NO, I really will not tell you which fandom. Not even my boyfriend can waterboard it out of me.

All you need to know is I started again with a voraciousness that sometimes scared me. I would think about my fanfiction day in and day out, crafting layered narratives with symbols and foreshadowing abound.

Oh, and did I mention I was writing smut?

Erotica really. Literary erotica. Literary…erotic…fanfiction.

I know how it sounds. Three words that don’t really belong together, or belong to gether in different combinations, but never all at once. People have so many preconceived notions about fanfiction. It’s stupid, it’s not real writing, it’s lazy, it’s —

I’ve been lucky to avoid most of those conversations.

People also have a lot of thoughts on erotica too. I mean, take a look at Booktok vs the world and the constant criticsms that spicy books are “porn for women” (which is really a gotcha in and of itself since you’re admiting porn is made mostly for the male gaze).

Literary fiction though, well that’s a class above the rest. That’s for the most intelligent of us all. At least that’s what readers of exclusively literary fiction will have you believe in a smarmy, pretnetious way.

I love a good litfic. Just like a love a good fanfic. And I’m a romance writer, of course I love a spicy book.

Why not put three things I love into one?

What started as an outlet for a creative mind stifled by the throes of a world in crisis became something more.

I started to collect fans of my writing. People who would ask me when the next update would be. people invested in the stories I was creating for the characters.

People who would say, “I can’t believe I get to read this for free.”

I didn’t think too much about comments like that at first. I went from teaching to nannying and continued to obsess over my fanfiction for a year and a half before anything would change. It was my outlet. My creative everything.

I started writing plays again, but not with the same ferociousness I’d write my fanfiction. I was eager to get back to my readers, my nameless, faceless friends on the internet. Because that’s what they were, more than fans, they became friends.

There were times I’d ask myself why. I’d worry about how much time, energy, and thought I put into my stories compared to my day to day life. I was…embarrassed a bit. So much time and effort put into art I couldn’t monetize.

Then I got medicated. That was the true turning point. Zoloft.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

For a year and a half, I had relied on fanfiction to be my prescription. It was where I derived all my dopamine. Then, once I had something actually regulating me, allowing me to see my life in more vivid colors, I wanted more for myself.

I didn’t want to be a nanny much longer. Hell, I didn’t want to work with children any more unless they were my own. And the one thing I knew I was good at was writing.

Copywriting. I should do copywriting. Content writing. Right? That was how I could make a career. I’d have to take my time to get a portfolio, take small jobs, keep nannying until I had something steady.

Freelancing. I’ll freelance.

Despite being an overthinker in many ways, sometimes I invest deeply into being an amateur: someone who does something simply for the love of it. Maybe the work is clumsy, lacks refinement and grace. But the love and passion can make up for a lot of the shortcomings.

I hopped on Upwork, a company I no longer espouse, but at the time felt like a workable path to entry.

There were plenty of copywriting gigs. They didn’t pay much and the competition was stiff. I started applying. Nearly got scammed. Kept looking.

It wasn’t fast going, but I was okay with that. I didn’t think it would be a quick shift. I was ready to be patient.

And then a job popped up.

Purchasing 5000 word romance short stories

Hiring ghostwriters to write steamy 5000 word short stories! Ongoing work available for exceptional writing. Detailed instructions regarding niche/sub-genre provided. Please show examples of your romance or steamy fiction when applying for this job.

And a light bulb went off.

I can do that.

I’ve been doing that. I have a whole portfolio ready to go. Just have to change some names and details and they’ll be none the wiser it’s fanfiction.

So that’s what I did. Sent over two samples with names changed and boom.

Booked it.

The pay was shit. Not even a cent per word. I didn’t care, though. It was exciting. A novelty.

To be paid for my writing. Not my playwriting, not some sort of copywriting or content writing.

The thing I loved when I was 11 years old. Romances. Happy endings. Things I never thought I could take seriously.

This one job was a snowball. Soon enough, it was rolling down a hill without any stopping it. One job became two, became four, and suddenly, I had a roster of clients and had to quit my nannying job.

It all began two and a half years ago. Now I have a couple clients and am working on my own projects thanks to the cushion two years of ghostwriting has given me. I spend my days writing, I have complete over my time, I can travel when I want, support my loved ones when they need me, or myself when I need a break.

embracing my inner Joan Didion

I don’t answer to anyone but myself. She can be a difficult lady to please, but…it’s a gift.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been lows. My burnout is a subject for a whole other newsletter. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

So…how did I accidentally become a ghostwriter?

In a word, fanfiction.

In a few words, I loved the things I loved hard and I didn’t let them go.