Ghostwriter Hilary Liftin dishes on her first novel, 'Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper'
No one grows up thinking they are going to be a ghostwriter. Many do it because they are journalists and want some other work. I realized it was what I really wanted to do.
Writing a novel was both daunting and liberating. I'd never written or studied fiction. I'd never faced the blank page, so to speak. That was the daunting part. Mark Twain was the one who said truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to be believable. The daunting part about writing fiction is you can't just say this happened so believe me. You have to make it believable.
But at the same time it was liberating because I realized when I write celebrity memoirs, I stick to the facts. We do our bests, my clients and I, to orchestrate the narrative to play out in an interesting way. Here I had the total freedom to time things the way I wanted to time them. I could put two dramatic moments right next to each other if I wanted to. I could have Lizzie Pepper reading her pre-nup as she's pumping milk for her babies before her wedding. That just does not happen in real life.
Read the full interview with Lizzie Pepper here.
