Ghosts in the Machine

This is a fascinating article from this week's Observer. I find it enough of a challenge to write my own imaginings in my own authentic voice. How difficult it must be to be the voicebox of someone else (someone you may, indeed, be struggling to like or tolerate *cough* Katie Price * cough*).

It seems a strange process, and one that reduces the writing experience to a mere financial transaction. Now I am not one of these people who believes that the only legitimate route to artistry is the "starving in a garrett" paradigm, but the ghostwriting relationship seems almost prostitutive: taking the money & going through the motions, although your heart lies elsewhere, and your "partner" gets all the bliss. Where is the creative element? Or does the creative element lie in making a string of garbled and inane reminisences into something vaguely readable, whilst simultaneously buffing the rough edges off a "personality" that may be partially formed, if not deformed? Does the ghost simply lie back, grit their teeth, hitch up their skirt and think of the artistic freedom they are buying themselves with this little pocket of financial security.

Also, Wayne Rooney getting £5million for his "autobiography"?! Wrong in more ways than I care to waste time enumerating. Although I suppose his spluttering incoherency when he gets to relating the details for the "caught shagging an OAP in a brothel" chapter might be worth a peek, if only for the schadenfreude of it all (look it up, Wayne).