If you are a past reader of this column, you will have learned that I make my daily bread scribbling my naughty little fictions, reviewing adult toys, blogging for porn sites, as much as I do ghostwriting for various clients. In this regard, I have penned books by dentists, insurance how-to’s, and quite a few memoirs, all anonymously, letting the person I interview for the book, and the person paying me to write it, stamp their name on the tome. It’s been fascinating work, has made me some great client/friends, and takes me far and away from having to write about the latest male masturbator making the market or ruminating over some latex outfit Cardi B happened to wear in her last video.

But as you can rightly assume from the word ‘ghost’ in ghostwriting, nobody knows I have written these books. In fact, I just landed a job at a very big adult business portal, maybe the biggest adult business portal, (a sure fact I am sure proud of) but most of the work I will write here will be anonymous too. I will be given no byline. Nobody but a select few will even know which pieces I write, unless I report on them… which I have been told I can do. But generally, once again I step forward in my career, and believe me, working for this place IS a big step forward, without my name attached to my work.

How does this make me feel?

Give me the work, I say. Maybe if I was younger (lots younger than I am now, I am very crusty and old) I’d care to make noise, rubber stamp my name and likeness across everything of mine that’s out there. Maybe I wouldn’t even take ghostwriting assignments, feeling that all I produce should have my name on it, at the very least. But I lead a quieter existence these days. You won’t much find my picture at too many places (yes, it is at the bottom of this column, but generally very few places) and I’d much rather fade into the background in what I do.

I think writers, generally, are of this mind set. Sure, we all like a pat on the back, some reading groupie coming up at a book signing, stripping down their pants and asking us to sign their thong (men and women both). But generally, scribbling for a living is a solitary endeavour. We do it because we like to be quiet, be by ourselves.

Plus, I am not so vain, well at least not so vain anymore, that I would let my ego get in the way of a job. Sure, I used to be all about the bluster, the ballyhoo, but this was in my younger days when what I produced, be it music or words, was not of such high quality as I produce now… if it is of any quality at all. I think I all but “blew my load,” being so brazen, shaking my ass on stage, literally, and wanting to be seen and heard as much as I was. Again, I was much younger. But youth, they say, is wasted on the young.

Believe me, the last thing you’d want to see is me in a pair of leather pants these days!

😲

You have to come to your own comfort level with all of this. As much as the salary you will demand for your work as what else you want along with it. In fact (and this stays just between us, ok?) that new position I just acquired is not paying me anywhere near what I usually get for similar writing jobs. But I want ‘in’ with this company, I know the work will be fun and easy. And mostly, something steady, which this job seems to be, even a part time regular gig, is manna from heaven for a freelancer. That my name won’t go on the pieces is not a deal breaker in this instance.

So, to ghost or not to ghost?

This only becomes a question if you let it be.