1 Great Letter to a Future Client

Dear Future Client:

We haven’t met yet because you’re still looking for a ghostwriter. That’s okay. When you hire me as your professional ghostwriter, you’re not hiring me just to write your book, speech, website, blog, or anything else.

You’re hiring someone to protect your project, even when life gets in the way.

“Life gets in the way.” That’s something I tell all my clients when we’re about to begin. People get sick. People go on vacation. Family makes demands. People’s competing priorities creep in. Other unexpected interruptions happen.

Let me reassure you, my future client: Your investment in your story and in me will not go to waste, even when the project gets put on hold. We’ll change the timeline if needed. If you’re sick, rest up. The project can wait. I’m not going anywhere. 

Here are eight things I can be doing while you’re away.

1. Your project doesn’t come to a complete stop. So you’ve come down with pneumonia and will have to take two months off. Fine. I understand and will continue to make progress wherever possible so the project doesn’t lose momentum.

I have a client who visited a throat specialist. The doctor told him he couldn’t speak for two months, so the book is on hold. That’s okay because I have many documents from his past to go through, and I will be doing that in the interim. He won’t have to start over when we resume.

2. I can discover what’s missing. During a pause, I can go through our interviews and find unanswered questions, make notes of those, and ask you when we meet again. I won’t be wasting time trying to remember those questions, they’ll be right there in the notes. As a result, we’ll have more productive interviews in which I’ll ask better questions. That will net us more productive conversations later.

I also can listen again to our previous interviews and critically examine your vocabulary, humor, rhythm, and speech patterns, making the current and all subsequent drafts sound even more like you.

3. The research doesn’t end. Future client, you don’t need to be with me while I research. I can look into valid historical events, relevant businesses, industries you’ve worked in, technologies you have invented, story locations to verify facts, and any timeline inconsistencies I find.

I’ve had clients who were in the Bronx when the gangs tried to make peace and who were on the Sunset Strip during the Summer of Love. I had a client fight a state agency, and another that invented a better hearing aid. I had to research all of these to corroborate the events and understand the state bureaucracy and jargon so I could tell the story from a knowledgeable position.

This improves accuracy and makes for fewer errors later.

4. The book’s structure can improve. While I wait for you, my future client, to get better, I can experiment with better chapter orders that can make the story stronger and the manuscript more compelling.

I had a client that gave me two documents, one she knew she wanted to include and one she wasn’t sure what to do with. I figured that since much of the second document already covered much in her first document, I could eliminate most of the second document and combine the rest into the first document.

5. The theme can become clearer. Downtime gives me time to discover deeper messages connecting the stories.

The client from the Bronx originally came to me with a series of stories that we tried to organize as a “Wonder Years” theme. But over time, I came to realize that the real story was the two brothers, one who joined a gang and one who didn’t, and how their lives turned out. I determined the gang brother was the protagonist, the other brother was the narrator, and the neighborhood was the antagonist.

6. Supporting materials can be organized. Photos, letters, journals, police reports, court transcripts, awards and citations, and newspaper clippings are among the documents that require organization and analysis. Not working with you, my future client, creates time for me to do this work. That way, nothing gets overlooked.

One client had me examine hundreds of pages of court documents, which I used to tell what happened when she took on the state of Arizona. A publishing company told her that was the strongest part of the entire manuscript because 1) it really happened like that, 2) readers could picture the scenes. 

7. Others can still talk. With your permission, I can interview your parents, siblings, spouse, friends, business associates, coworkers, or anyone else relevant to your story and get their insights, comments, and thoughts. Then I can write them up and add them into the current draft.

As a former journalist, I have long held that hearing from others leads to a more complete story. That’s why when I wrote about the schoolteacher with a heart ailment, I spoke to his wife, daughter, friends, principal, and doctor.

8. Editing, designing, publishing, and marketing plans can begin. Depending where we are and if we’re far enough along when you have to stop, I can reach out to my editing, designing, publishing, or marketing contacts and inquire about their availability and determine if my future client is a fit for them. 

Remember that there are seven steps. Writing is the third step, preceded by idea and format and followed by editing, designing, publishing, and marketing. I don’t need my future client around to talk to these people. But I can promise that you will be better prepared once the manuscript is complete.

Understand that in the examples I gave, these clients weren’t sick, injured, or required delays. But all the same, if you happen to have to delay the project, these are things I can do for you while you, my future client, take care of what you need to. And all this happens within our existing contract, at no additional cost to you.

Don’t worry if you need to delay the project once we get started. I’ll be working behind the scenes.

If you’re thinking about a book and want to talk through whether we’d be a good fit, take a look at some of my other posts on ghostwriting at https://leebarnathan.com/blog/ or reach out directly to set up a conversation.