What I Regret About Ghostwriting

A couple of years ago, I did ghostwriting for a marketing firm. It was really easy writing and I made some pretty okay money. Then after a moment of realizing how overwhelmed I felt doing it, I stopped.

Today, I was looking over my email in search of something I’ve written before and I came across post after post that I sent to them to use. I realized how many articles I had written during that time.  My heart tugged with regret as I looked through all of those articles. I googled a few and spotted them online still, none with my name on them. Yet, it wasn’t really just about my name getting on articles. There was more to it.

1) I was never writing for myself.


I recall vividly that I was not making it a point to write for myself. I think I maybe was blogging at the time, but I never made it a point to write – seriously write – for myself the way I was for them.

2) I gave up the good stuff.


I accidentally gave them an article to use that I meant to submit elsewhere. I always want to use my best whenever I write, whoever I write for, but now I wish I had taken caution and kept a few of those gems for my own portfolio.

3) I didn’t build off of the work I was doing.


At the time, I wasn’t thinking long term. I also wasn’t seeking new writing opportunities as well. Not really. I was just churning out work to help make ends meet. It helped, sure, but I wasn’t expanded and pushing myself outside of those bounds of that gig.

Now, I guess I’m in a bit better point.  I still do some freelance writing and even ghostwriting, but I also learned along the way to not put all my eggs in one gig’s basket. I did and devoted way too much of myself and channeled way too much creativity towards one thing. I won’t do that again.

I think also if I had tempered my pace a little with them, I wouldn’t have felt so overwhelmed. Creativity is a well and you need to feed it as well as draw from it. The way to feed your creative well, in my opinion, is to spend time doing something creative that has no business strings attached. Write and creative for fun. For you. And that is the lesson I needed to learn. That feeds the well.