Sarah Palin has a memoir coming out in November. I’ve seen people online knocking her for working with a ghostwriter. I don’t intend to ever get overtly political on The Juggling Writer unless it somehow relates directly to writing. But I’ll admit that I’m not even remotely a fan of Sarah Palin. Even if you used your imagination! I say that because I’m about to defend her.
I have no problem with Palin using a ghostwriter. I don’t knock Bill Clinton, or any other politician or celebrity for using ghostwriters, either. In fact, I love that they use ghostwriters, and I love that people are talking about it online.
Why do people use ghostwriters?
People use ghostwriters because writing is hard work!
Writing isn’t as easy as many people like to think it is. Anybody who’s written for even a short time has heard the advice, “Write what you know.” And yet Sarah Palin and many other politicians and celebrities need a lot of help “writing what they know.”
It doesn’t matter if somebody is intelligent, not-so-intelligent, creative, technical, or anything else — to write well takes a lot of practice!
Instead of seeing celebrities working with ghostwriters as a cop out, I see it as proof that writing even your own story (let alone making up something from nothing), is tougher than most people think. And that means there’s still going to be a demand for people who work hard to write well and who write well on their own!
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