As with most professionals, however, I’m not always the best match for people who come to me for help. It depends on what prospective authors are looking for—and they’re often not sure themselves. To help in the decision of matching author to ghost, I offer a few tips for finding the right partnership.

1. Knowledge: A great writer alone will not produce insightful text. Best to hire a ghost that knows your subject and audience.
2. Writing style: Writers come from all backgrounds, and their style reflects it. They will try to echo your style, but they cannot entirely escape their own. Make sure you like what you read.
3. Publishing network. Do you need more than writing help? Ask if the ghost has contacts with agents and editors who sell books in your genre. Selling a book proposal may be your biggest hurdle.
4. Ability to “deliver”: Make sure your ghost has a track record of delivering on time. Ask him/her about earlier projects. Ask his/her former clients. Ask to talk to the ghost’s editor.
5. Controllable process. Inquire about the ghostwriter’s process for making steady progress through each phase of book development. Like any good consultant, he or she should have a rational, predictable set of steps to manage the process.
6. Writing quality: Get writing samples. Look at the ghost’s books, but more important, get their raw text. Ask for a draft of work they alone have worked on—before an editor got ahold of it.
7. Total cost: Remember that you’re hiring a person who will be working for you for months.  Match costs to your budget. Hiring ghosts who mainly bring writing skill to the table may cost $50/hour. Hiring ghosts with high-end skills in storytelling, researching in your specialty, and facilitating fresh insights that require intellectual heft will cost more than $100/hr.
8. Consulting ability: Do you want a writer who is also a consultant or advisor in handling your subject, publishing program, and marketing plans? Make sure your ghost has this ability and expertise.
9. The fine print: Ghostwriters work in different ways. Details can be spelled out in a written contract: copyright, bylines, work-for-hire provisions, royalties, nondisclosure provisions, and so on.
10. 10. Due diligence: As with any professional, check out the ghost’s credentials and references. They should freely offer contact information from former clients.

As a former magazine editor, I used to hire a lot of freelance writers. Many looked great on paper—their credentials and writing samples. But when faced with a new subject and fixed deadline, many couldn’t deliver the goods. They didn’t comprehend the subject. They couldn’t develop new insights. They couldn’t write smooth copy. They couldn’t finish on time.

I always had a rule of thumb in which I figured I needed three “must haves” in prospective writers: They needed to convince me they could “deliver”—come through with professional work on time. They needed to be resourceful researchers—able to dig for information, interview good people, and develop new insights. And they needed to be able to write—compose compelling text. Notice the order of priority.

Of course, I cared about other things, too. But you get the idea. Make sure you fulfill your most important criteria—whether you’re looking for excellence in three dimensions or a dozen. And remember that people who work as writers are like people who work as cooks: They often specialize in one or a few kinds of cuisine, and the meal they deliver can vary widely, deserving a rating of one to five stars.

One of the most basic rules of improv is not to deny an “offer.” When one actor asserts something, the next actor builds on it—and never rejects it. This is much the same as in brainstorming.

A common game in improv is called “yes, and.” Every actor says, “yes” to a statement made by a previous member of the cast, and then adds to it by starting with “and.” For example, an actor says, “Your mother wears army boots.” And another actor says, “Yes, and the boots belonged to my father.” A scene quickly gets interesting.

The converse of “yes, and” is “yes, but,” which typically stalls creativity. The “but” blocks progression.

When you’re trying to flesh out a message or argument – or trying to break out with a new insight for a chapter ending, closing chapter, or an epilogue—think about the “yes, and” game. Use an “and” to see if you can advance your insights to a new, surprising place.

For a beginner’s video clip of the “yes, and” game, click here. Or for a more sophisticated reference to improv, click here.

I ran across Jim Stengel’s new book, Grow, last week, and it struck me how much his management ideas apply to the early phases of book writing. Stengel, a business consultant, argues that what underpins the success of the world’s highest-growth companies is one or two ideals. I would argue that one or two ideals underpin the success of the world’s best nonfiction books.  In both cases, ideals specify the way in which products improve the lives of people.

Pretty simple. If you want to succeed with a company (or book) you should start by getting clear on how it will improve the lives of customers (or readers). Stengel’s research shows that five ideals matter. (A short version of his thinking is available as a ChangeThis essay.) He singles out the following: eliciting joy, enabling connection with others, inspiring exploration, evoking pride (confidence, vitality), and impacting society.

Stengel maintains that all great companies manage themselves and their brands to excel in these five “fields of fundamental human values.” What do you think? Seems like the same would be true in books, wouldn’t it?

Stengel gives authors a fresh way to think through the value and direction of books at the concept stage. As an author, you have to ask yourself: Do I propose to deliver on one of the ideals that matter in improving people’s lives?

Are you giving readers joy? Helping them connect? Inspiring them to expand their minds? Evoking pride. Making society work better? If not, maybe your book is missing something. Maybe you need some fine tuning. Ideally, says Stengel, you’re focused mainly on just one ideal. How sharply can you define it?

I like marketing guru Michael Port’s way of looking at it: You have to figure out your financial, emotional, physical, and spiritual return on writing. He calls it your FEPS ROI. For starters, how much money will you get back? Then, how will it make you feel emotionally and physically? And of course, how will it serve your purpose?

You can’t actually put numbers to all these things. But you should put them all into your mental ROI equation. You want to feel comfortable that you’re going to get a good return, given the time, money, stress, and sacrifice of doing a book. In the process, the investment variables you examine will clarify goals and directions for your book. This has the added benefit of being a huge time saver as you choose what to—and not to—include in the book.

Port’s acronym is FEPS ROI, and it is a good one for anyone. But you could also create your own. Along with (or instead of) the F, E, P, and S, you might use other letters—Career, Reputation, Networking, Credibility, and so on.

Whatever your acronym, spell it out on paper, and keep a record throughout your book project. The variables you include, and the return you’re shooting for, will keep you straight on the path to delivering the right book—structuring the right argument and choosing the right examples—and one you feel returns dividends for years to come.

Need a breakthrough idea? Try pausing the action at your keyboard and watching a YouTube video of a standup comic. Or cut out of work early and have a beer or glass of wine. Both comedic relief and alcohol force the mind out of focus and into a new field of thought. Your attention drifts to associations with other kinds of things—and in turn you become more flexible in kindling creative fires.

Need a creative idea that comes only with constant iteration or refinement? Stay in your seat and keep working. Some creative breakthroughs require gnawing on the bone of an idea for hours (or days) until you gradually pierce the marrow. Lehrer quotes Nietzsche: “All great artists and thinkers are great workers.”

One thing that helps all creative thinkers is a rich inventory of knowledge and experience. When you’re stuck, deep dive into something new. He notes that Steve Jobs was known for doing calligraphy.  With the brain following a novel path, you let serendipity be your teacher.

Or try reading Lehrer. Maybe his article will do the trick—and a joyful trick it is. As he says of creativity, “There was nothing, now there is something. It’s almost like magic.”

A comfortable massage can make facts work so much better in conveying an author’s argument. Massaging is very tempting. But the risk is putting the author’s reputation on the line. A good example of the consequences came in a review of Martin Lindstrom’s book, Brandwashed, in The Wall Street Journal. Click here for the link.

Reviewer Eric Felten took Brandwashed to task over and over for outdated facts—for example, lauding the competence of companies that had since gone out of business. According to Felten, Brandwashed also reported incorrect facts—as in saying children learn to recognize the word “Ronald” (as in Macdonald) before recognizing “Mama.” Or saying that “never before in the history of our species” have parents and teens had more in common.

I suggest a quick read of the Brandwashed review. It is a reminder to authors of how much facts count. Reviewers care. Readers care. Authors need to care, too.

Grunwald wanted that sign to remind him that everything he put in his book (The Swamp) made a larger point than the message of the passage he was writing. He then mentioned that a colleague had a sign over his desk with another key point: “What’s next?” That is, what’s he next question that will draw readers through the text?

That got me to thinking about signs above authors’ desks. Most of us probably post things that we often forget and wish we hadn’t. They are things we’d like to make habitual. On my screen I have posted “omm.” For me that means, “one minute of meditation.” In other words: Relax! Focus! If I am tensed up, hunching my shoulders, breathing shallowly out of concern for missing my deadline, I won’t write well. For me, a relaxed mind is a flexible mind. I’m able to make more metaphorical connections, remember details better, synthesize unlike thoughts more easily.

And what do other writers post over their desks? I searched a bit and found a few. From Jane Yolen, who writes both both fiction and nonfiction: “Value the process, not the product.” In other words, enjoy the writing as you go—get the most out of the journey and not the destination. Good advice for staying sane.

From Jill McCorkle, a fiction author: “When the horse is dead, get off of it!” In other words, if the piece of writing you’re working on is going nowhere, cut your losses and ditch it. McCorkle points out that you still learn a lot, even if you have to throw something away.

From Melissa Jones, a fiction author: “A messy first draft is the sign of a brilliant mind.” Good advice: write steadily and don’t worry about the warts and deformities. You can fix them later. I would add that this is key to writing a book on schedule. You can’t pause to perfect the first draft or you’ll never get to the second.

Here are some others I find that authors use: “Do not confuse effort with results,” “You have my permission to write crap.” And the classic for journalism students: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” I especially like this last one, because it reminds authors to verify all facts, even from the most reliable of sources. Many authors ignore fact checking at their peril.

What’s the sign above your desk? What’s your most important reminder as an author? Along with “omm,” I also go for some simple positive thinking. I have now-faded fortune-cooking epigram that I like: “Your present plans will succeed.”

Say you’re writing a book titled How to Succeed with Body Language. To start chapter 1, you will probably want to convey the biggest problem most people face. But if you’re like most writers, you’ll find that your chosen problem statement comes with a lot of baggage you feel must go with it – not just an explanation but an example, definition, context, caveats, ramifications, a touch of color.

How do you convey not only your main point accurately but do so while engaging and orienting the reader with minor ancillary points?

To illustrate how you might include all this information without overloading paragraph one, let’s assume chapter 1 has the following message: Ignorance of your own body language can make you an easy victim for other people. Let’s also assume you feel it is imperative to include a definition of body language, the situations in which body language matters, suggestions on how much a person has at risk, and an example to make your point concrete.

Scale, scope, description, importance—you want all that right up front. So what do you do? If you try to put all of those things in one paragraph, you’ll get tangled in your burden of prose—not to mention get sideways with confused readers.

There are three ways I know of to tackle this challenge. All three require deferring some content to highlight other content. I call this the art (and craft) of deferral. Before you start drafting your lead, sort through all the apparently essential material and ask: What can I leave until later

Here are three ways I approach it:

1. Oversimplify your point and introduce caveats later. That is, start with a sweeping generalization and, in later paragraphs, reshape or hedge the distortions with qualifications.

Say you begin: “People who don’t pay attention to their body language get taken advantage of by others. Take the example of Betty Brown, a widow, who goes on a Monday morning to Joe Green’s used car lot. Her agreeable smile signals to Joe that he can quote her a premium price, and that she will surrender readily….”

The lead overstates. Agreeable smiles don’t always signal surrender during negotiation. But the oversimplification has the virtue of capturing the reader’s attention with its clarity. In a later paragraph, you can hedge: “To be sure, smiles don’t always convey meaning quite so clearly….” And then you explain the limitations of your assertion. (Journalists use this technique so often, they call it the “to be sure” paragraph.)

2. Choose just a piece of the message to start. After you’ve made your partial point, you can later explain that the subpoint is actually part of a larger message.

So you could begin another chapter. “Just by folding his arms as the neighborhood toughs approached, Jason Murdoch gave the wrong signal…”

The lead uses a specific instance of risky behavior in the face of aggressive adolescent men. After a couple of paragraphs of detailing the woe Jason brings on himself – which could make a riveting opening – you have given yourself breathing room to make your main point. “Jason’s use of his arms is just one example of how body language can put you at risk.”

3. Tell readers upfront you have a complicated or multi-part message. Then state one piece of the message at a time. Fill in the puzzle step by step.

“The ignorance of body language can, in four different ways, put you at a disadvantage to other people…”

The lead is not very enticing. It sounds like you’re going to take a dry approach to the topic. But its clarity and directness have a lot of appeal. And readers love clarity.

In any case, before you begin writing, think about how you break your package of must-have material into smaller, bite-size pieces. The goal is to guide your reader at a measured and enjoyable pace through your writing. You don’t have to cram all the content into a first paragraph, no matter how complicated it is. Defer some of the meal until later. The more you can defer, the sharper you can make your initial point.

In one of my interviews, I talked with Tom Niergarth, head of New Product Commercialization at Herman Miller, Inc., the subject of the book. I was curious about how new product development was managed. Tom told me that Herman Miller engineers mark development milestones with documents called “deliverables.” A series of must-do development tasks has been translated into a series of engineering documents. This is the key: Only the delivery of the specified documents constitute accomplishment. A lot of furious activity does not.

I realized the Herman Miller chair-development process provided a structure for running all kinds of creative processes, including the creative process of book development. The completion of deliverables requires finishing a discrete and important piece of a multi-step project. Each deliverable gives tangible evidence of progress. No document, no accomplishment, no pats on the back.

The deliverables approach is remarkably similar to the “paper trail” approach I recommend for books. Each piece in the paper trail marks a development milestone. A marketing positioning deliverable at Herman Miller, for example, is akin to the  “positioning journal” I recommend for book development. See my earlier post.

I have since realized something else. I once talked with authors about a book’s “creative process” as if the emphasis should be put on “creative,” not on “process.” I had it backwards. The emphasis should fall on “process.” Niergarth’s point: Clarity in process requires clarity in thinking.  Clarity in thinking yields clarity in product.  That’s just as true for nonfiction book development as for furniture development.

Are you a creative person or a process person? If you’re an author, you’re both. When people talk about writing being a “craft,” I believe they are referring to the repeatable process you use to deliver great results.  Creativity still remains key, although it remains not fully controllable. But process is something anyone can learn, can learn to master, and can learn to follow reliably and with control. That’s what we all need when facing the daunting task of writing a book.

What do you address in a journal? The answers to some big questions: What is my book’s position in the market? How is it different from other books? How will I approach my subject to appeal to my core readers? Who are my core readers, anyway?

In December 2008, I began journaling about the positioning of my upcoming book, Merchants of Virtue: Herman Miller and the Making of a Sustainable Company. Before going beyond the stage of clarifying a message and a table of contents, I wanted to take a shot at specifying where the book would stand on the bookstore shelf.

I knew from the start that I wanted to tell the story of how Herman Miller, Inc., became a role model for corporate sustainability. I intended to chronicle the ups and downs of people in the trenches. But I could go many ways with the story, and I needed to “think out loud” about the best direction.

As an example of what goes into a positioning journal, below I have pasted some actual text, in the hopes you get an idea of how to create a journal for yourself. You can use several tricks to get yourself started. One that I use is to imagine I’m writing the text for the book jacket. Here’s what I wrote:

 “Jacket-like copy: This is the true story of the battle by a band of managers at a century-old Midwest manufacturer to run a truly green company. In the late 1980s, in the wake of Exxon Valdez, public disclosure of toxic-release data, and the focus on all things green in the run-up to the 1992 Rio conference, these company insiders were galvanized by events around them to change business as usual. The unlikeliest character, a South Dakota chemical engineer, emerges as the driver/hero who asks why Herman Miller can’t do better. In the process, he and his band not only fulfill the promise of re-designing the company for sustainability; they fulfill their own potential to live up to higher values. [to essentially get people in the corporation to self-actualize per De Pree values]”

This is from a document unchanged since December 2008. (“De Pree” refers to DJ De Pree, the company founder.) The final book departed from what I first wrote. That’s normal. The journal is a starting point. It is an original bearing. It is also a place to write without the pressure of writing “real” text for the proposal. You’re taking practice shots at the basket.

In my journaling, one thing I try to do is flesh out themes on two levels. One theme applies to the topic at hand, which in this case is managing for corporate sustainability. The other, a more deeply buried theme, applies to life in general. Readers always want to learn about the topic they bought the book for. But they give you bonus credit when, in some indirect way, your story resonates in their private lives.

Here’s where I tried to specify the themes:

“This is a story in which expediency, indifference, short-termism, skepticism, and contempt threaten to erode the progress wrought by adherence to values and virtue…but people at the corporation defeat these antagonistic forces.

At a higher level, the story is about people being tested to live up to company values (which includes demonstrating stewardship). Practicing values (through stewardship) is a long-term, holistic process of involving/stewarding/growing human and natural resources. HM struggles to live up to its own founders’ definition, and increasingly a more demanding definition of values as defined by workers and society.

So Merchants of Virtue is more than an inside story of a battle by Herman Miller managers against expediency and indifference and short-term profit; it is a big-picture book about the past, present, and future potential of serious business people to achieve sustainable management – and the huge impact these mgt changes have on design, mfg, marketing, and consumer values. This is a view of the future of responsible business in America….”

You can see that I was struggling. I wanted to stretch myself, try some expansive thoughts. That’s one reason why I call writing in a journal “writing to think.” When you’re writing to think, you can write as if no one else will read your words. You can reach beyond your grasp. You can wing it. Writing with a relaxed and playful mind can lead to some great ideas. This is entirely different from what I call “writing to deliver,” or writing when you’re composing your book proposal or manuscript. At that point, you’re much more focused, and more serious.

Another thing I include in my journaling is an idea or two about how to start the book. What will capture the interest of my target audience at the get-go? Merchants of Virtue is a business story, not a concept or how-to book. Since a story often doesn’t start at the beginning—that is, it doesn’t flow chronologically from start to finish—I puzzled over the best place to have readers enter the action. Here were my thoughts:

“The story emerges from the challenges/trials of people at the bottom or the organization. The designers, both industrial design and organizational design, want to fulfill the ideal of stewardship (or fulfill ideal of designing a community to fulfill its potential). Question for proposal is: Who are the movers and shakers? Who are the “giants” and “roving leaders,” as Max De Pree calls them? Paul Murray? DfE designers responding to Murray?

Top managers may be a side show, or even the antagonists, in that they are challenging their people through ever-higher expectations to fulfill company values per De Pree philosophy (see p81, Tribal Storytelling).

Maybe story begins with Murray’s son getting anaphylactic shock. Murray was supervisor in production, and this was, for him, a personal inciting incident. Story then is about bottom-rung people pushing the sustainability agenda (agenda to “design” a sustainable co) – with blessings from a company culture that matched their own, the culture imbued with values of De Prees and 1960s generation.”

In this case, I was thinking about starting with a flashback, an event from the life of a manager named Paul Murray, a paint chemist who would become the head of all company sustainability efforts. As I got to outlining the book in detail, I didn’t start the book’s main story this way, which was an event from 10 years earlier, but I did turn the event into a prologue.

By the time I was finished, my positioning journal ran over 2,000 words. I did use a lot of the journal material in my book proposal. But the value of the journal was to facilitate early thinking. The various passages were like experimental clay models. I built them quickly without fear of making a mistake. I could shape and reshape them to get them into better and better form.

The journal is an essential step in book development because it helps you further clarify where you’re going. It can seem like an “extra” step. But an extra step that improves clarity is an extra step that eliminates missteps later.