"My first real job was selling television commercials for WGAN-TV in Portland, Maine. I messed up virtually every detail of my life that touched that job.
I borrowed money to buy a “suit” and for some reason bought an off-white one.
I borrowed money from my parents to buy a used car, and somehow never managed to pay them back.
I made one sale in six months, before getting fired.
I lived in a closet, literally.
Moving out from the third floor, I decided it would be easier to throw my dresser out the window than carry it down to the dumpster. I came very close to killing my roommate."
I hope this person became a comedian as this is the beginning of an article in Forbes. That's not the case, though. He's Bruce Kasanoff and his website says he is a ghostwriter who has written over 100 articles on Forbes. There are three books attributed to him as well. Bruce's name comes up when I ask for the best known social media ghostwriter. (I'm still thinking about how large his closet was to have a dresser.)
Ghostwriting has been with us for so long - the most well-known unfounded rumour is that Shakespeare was not the author of his works:
"While most academics scoff at the idea, gallons of ink have been spent arguing that William Shakespeare was not the author of the masterpieces attributed him. Ironically, it was intellectual elitism that first began the theories, born out of disbelief that a man without a University education could create such apparently learned works.
Was he really rival Christopher Marlowe, who faked his death in a tavern in Deptford to continue writing through Shakespeare as a ghostwriter? Was he the genius Francis Bacon, taking a break from scientific investigation to poetically render the human condition incognito? Or was Shakespeare Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, as the new film Anonymous conjectures, protecting his upper class persona by employing a lowly theatre player to pose as the author of his plays."
I wondered how people might distinguish between ghostwriting and writing/authorship - one's a job and the other is a calling. I decided that - I didn't look it up.
Isn't this a beautiful leaf? The Caladium plant - a tropical.
