New Perspectives

Reflection

As I look back on my ghostwriting experience, I realized how ignorant I was in last week’s blog post. I assumed it was easy when I just began to write. However, I failed in listening to the wise words of Scot. What was easy, which made me assume this project would be simple, was my knowledge of Billy and how he would present an argument. I know his style and his approach to presenting an argument to people. It was easy to structure the sentences in a way that presented his mannerisms. What was hard? First of all, the aspects of his information made it difficult to represent properly because of my lack of experience in the field of ghostwriting. Some of his information was cited using Wikipedia. This puzzled me because I was unsure of whether to use this information when writing his speech. However, these were his ideas and I went along with it. Also, the beginning contained a piece about the Greek titans. This was knowledge that Billy already knew about thus he said he didn’t cite it because it was something he didn’t even have to look up; he just used it as an analogy. So, do I cite this information if I had no knowledge about this Greek myth? This is his speech and in writing a speech for him, I decided to not include a citation. Secondly, as I found out, the specifics were the most troubling to figure out. For one, the most compelling part was to decide how I can integrate my style of writing into the speech. In his past papers and speeches he has wrote, his grammatical style and compressed word bank limited his ability to produce a quality paper. In ghostwriting for Billy, I had to figure out how I was going to compose the paper in a way that represented Billy’s style, but also a quality paper that he could use. I then thought about any president’s speech and realized that a ghostwriter produced a quality speech whether or not that president could produce his own work in such a manner. In my job as a ghostwriter, I have to make Billy seem as prominent of a person as I can. Next was my decision to format his paper to into a more considerate paper. He explained to me about the argument he was presenting and I realized that he had a hard nosed argument. He had not considered any other point of view. To be effective and appeal to people that are opponents of stem cell research, one must consider other people’s points of view. So I decided to consider other’s points of view and relay questions back to the audience. Many questions came about. Is this part of a ghostwriter’s job or would peppering a paper with your style and changing the voice of the paper stepping outside of a ghostwriters bounds? In my final decision I decided to be effective, I had to integrate these pieces into his paper. To finish up, my perception of ghostwriting has changed a lot compared to my perception last week. Ghostwriters must make a wide array of decisions compared to a paper that one writes for himself. However, the time consuming part of researching and finding information is literally cut in half. Additionally, I have developed an idea on the wide array of writing styles and ideas of writing that are not apparent on the surface (For example reading two different books). I assumed and thought from just reading in general that many writers were somewhat similar in techniques and other aspects of writing; perhaps only their uses and variety of words differing. Now, I believe writing is almost as autonomous as DNA is from person to person.

The Ghostwriting Experience, supposed to not be underestimated?

In my ghostwriting experience, the only troubles I ran into were actually finding out who to ghostwrite. I began by picking my parents brains to figure out what and if they write at their jobs. They both turned out to be a dead end. I was relatively surprised that they both did not have to write very much. It was all based on form letters they wrote to other companies. I then asked around with no luck. Then I found out my roommate Billy Knox was writing a paper for a speech class. I didn't really want to write about somebody else's paper, but Billy's speech was perfect. I already know his style, his passions and goals, and mentality in striving to be a political figure. Thus, emulating his style of writing for this project was easy. I had to focus on his presentation and how he would want words to be projected onto his audience. He uses a combination of good Karma, presentation skills, and confident persuasion in his speeches. He strives to be in the ranks of President Bush and many past political figures such as Kennedy. He gave me his sources and general outline of his paper. I then got bits and pieces that he wanted to use as analogies. I understood his goal in writing this paper, but also had to change my writing style to accommodate his. I am not sure; however, if this is a common practice. Or should I just not worry about his writing style in creating his speech, but rather focus on his style of presentation?
In thinking back, I see ghostwriting as a bit more challenging than writing my own paper or speech, using my skills but also thinking about it from the perspective of Billy. In writing a speech about stem cells, I would probably frame it differently, focusing on the audience to consider these aspects rather than putting pressure on the audience to take my beliefs as does Billy. He has trouble seeing different perspectives from other people. However, I probably haven’t been experienced to the full realm of ghostwriting, the part that is very hard and challenging. I suspect ghostwriting for somebody that you have not known your whole life is very challenging and takes extensive work to get inside and understand the mind of that person. Have others also experienced this dilemma?

Ghostwriting practices. Who Should?

I would like to comment today on current presidents and their use or disuse of ghostwriting tactics. Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream was not a ghostwritten book but rather a book written by Obama himself. Hillary Clinton (Hill-dog) was written by ghostwriters, who received about 6 % of her total profits and royalties. How about ghostwritten speeches? Do presidents write their own speeches? What category would these forms of authorship fall in? Are they effective or should presidents write their own speeches? Personally, high effective leaders in any profession value their time. Taking time to write a book or their speech would dramatically decrease their effectiveness, unless they have time. Thus, I argue that these types of people, with their ghostwriting authors, should not be criticized for their practices. Many examples include Bush, John Maxwell, Donald Trump and many other high effective leaders. My grandpa wrote a book I Can See Clearly Now, but he wasn’t expecting it to be on the best sellers list, so he included the author of his book in bigger letters than his name. However, economics would say for many famous people that putting their name without the ghostwriter would dramatically increase their sales. I was relatively oblivious to how widespread these practices were until now. For example now I know that the Britney Spears mom’s book about parenting probably was not written by her. So who should be criticized for their ghostwriting practices and who shouldn’t (or maybe not allowed).

Community?

After reading Smart Mobs, I realized I was relatively uneducated about how powerful networking and communities are in today’s world. Community is the word I want to focus on. Communities are found in business with many business models that are popping up today. Communities of professionals to network and talk to eachother. I can send my resume to a community of professionals to get an internship. I find communities that receive texts and other miscellaneous stuff. But what I argue is that our notion of communities are changing. As people we congregate at concerts, conferences, and organizations as a community of people with related interests. We as humans have an innate need to do this. We constantly are aggregating into groups. If humans were to individualize, it would go against what we are all about. I think that in today’s world, with advancing technology and allowing people across the world to interact with eachother, we are just reforming how we perceive our notions of communities. I see it as change, whether positive or negative I am not sure. So far, this new idea of community is creeping up behind our backs.