Most people think writing is about putting words on a page.
Sit down.
Type.
Job done.
But the truth?
The finished piece is only the tip of the iceberg. What you don’t see is everything beneath the surface: the false starts, the cuts, the rewrites, the constant reshaping until the words finally land where they should.
Effortless writing rarely comes easily. It takes hours of editing, pruning, and pacing. Whole sections get cut because they don’t serve the story. Sentences are tested, bent, and broken until they sound right.
The smoother it reads, the harder it’s been worked.
And in ghostwriting, this invisible labour runs even deeper. My job isn’t to make a piece sound like me. In fact, if it does, I’ve failed. The voice on the page must belong to the client, not the ghost. Readers need to hear them speaking, not vaguely sense some shadow in the background.
That takes time, listening, and patience. It means absorbing their vocabulary, their rhythm, their way of telling a story, until their voice flows naturally through the words. When it works, the client looks at the finished draft and says, “Yes. That sounds exactly like me.”
Why is that so important? Because readers can spot an impostor a mile away. They know when something feels off. They’ll sense if the words don’t match the speaker. Authenticity is what connects writer to reader, and if that bridge breaks, the whole piece collapses.
That’s why I tell every client the same thing: it has to be your voice on the page, never mine.
That’s the real reward. Not the credit. Not my name on the cover-in a lot of case and for obvious reasons, it isn’t.
But knowing I’ve built something solid out of all those hidden hours…
…then stepped quietly out of sight.
Because in the end, good writing is made not just by the things you do see, but by the things you don’t.
