3 Hidden Ways the Pandemic Helped Ghostwriting

Years before the COVID pandemic, I worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, and the paper underwent tremendous upheaval when it was sold and became part of a chain. Employees fretted that they were going to lose their jobs; some didn’t wait for that to happen, and when they left, their positions were absorbed.

I was equally nervous, but then an editor told me something I never forgot: There is opportunity amid crisis. “Look for your openings, and then go for it,” he said.

He was right. I relearned that lesson when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. From my research, other ghostwriters seemed to, also, so here are a few examples of turning a pandemic into a pot of gold.

The pandemic made people realize the importance of telling stories. COVID-19 caused many families to separate for their health. Stories abounded of grown children not being able to physically see their elderly parents for fear of catching or spreading the virus.

Amelia Hill, in The Guardian, wrote about how this caused people to hire ghostwriters to tell the family stories, histories, memoirs, and biographies before it was too late.

Hill quoted Caro Handley, who saw how the pandemic led to “an awareness of the frailty of life: that elderly relatives are so at risk and can die quite suddenly. 

“It’s so much more immediate and frightening now,” Handley said. “Grownup children are (realizing) now that if there ever was a time to record their parents’ stories, to protect them from being forgotten, the time is now.”

People became freelancers and never looked back. In her blog, freelance writer Kaleigh Moore wrote that 36% of the workforce performed freelance work and contributed $1.2 trillion to the American economy in 2020, a 22% increase from 2019.

This was probably due to the pandemic increasing the need for freelancers, since companies were laying off full-time employees while others quit amid the Great Resignation. Still, somebody had to write the company content, so freelancers solved that problem. 

What’s more, some 60% of these freelancers said they would never return to traditional jobs.

While Moore doesn’t specify ghostwriting in her article, she does list ghostwriting as one of her services on her LinkedIn profile. 

It caused a pivot. This is where my story comes in. I was doing copywriting but coming up against the law of diminishing returns. I was going to networking meetings, but the pool of new prospects had shrunk to almost zero, so I wasn’t getting as much work.

Then COVID hit and I had to do something different. A fellow networker had discovered there were organizations that were moving online, and they were located outside of Los Angeles, where I was. One was in Toronto. Another was in Philadelphia. A third was in Ireland.

I really liked the Philadelphia one, so I joined. Over time, the owners pivoted away from networking and toward career coaching. It was after that transition that my coach asked me what I wanted to do and I told him that, other than sportswriting, I never felt more satisfaction than when I was ghostwriting.

He suggested I do that full-time. The rest is history, as the cliche goes. 

I wasn’t alone. Sarah Walker Caron wrote about how she had to adjust parts of her writing process so she could avoid writer’s block. 

Moore quoted Grace Clarke, a marketing consultant who turned to TikTok and became a strategist.

“I hate saying this: The pandemic helped my business take off,” Clarke said. “I was just more ready than some. Without realizing it, I’d been putting in a ton of work to get into a position that allowed me to deliver when my industry shifted.”

The pandemic wasn’t perfect for ghostwriting services. I found stories about people having more troubles getting paid, and the work was more uncertain and irregular.

But I found far more positives than negatives. I’m experiencing that, too.

Don’t let a crisis deny you. Seize the possibilities.

If you’d like to comment on this or any other post, feel free to leave a message. Just click on the Contact tab and use the provided form.