Getting Started
Working together (a full collaboration) can include phone, Zoom, Skype, Team, and face-to-face meetings and interviews. I work with clients nationally as well as around the globe, and I’ve found in my 40+ years of ghostwriting, an initial contact should be done face to face; in person if possible. To me, it is important in any collaboration or partnership to “like” and respect the person I am working with. The same has always been true for my clients' attitudes toward me.
To me, the crux of a successful memoir collaboration is TRUST, CARING and LISTENING. They say there is an art to being a good listener. As a ghostwriter and an instinctively caring human being, listening intently comes naturally to me—it is born of true empathy. It doesn’t come from formal training; there are no classes to learn how to be empathetic. You either have it or you don’t; you either trust or you don’t, and if you do those things with your heart, you will be able to faithfully capture anyone’s story, interpret it in a creative and honest way—a way that is either a legacy, business proposition or an inspiring and uplifting story.
Your talent and dedication were essential to the realization of this book.
Thomas J. Leonard
Author of The Portable Coach