What's in the episode:

“I'm the technician helping them get it on the paper .”  - Ruby Peru 

The story already belongs to them, says ghostwriter Ruby Peru,  and as such she's happy to stay in the background. 

If she was a fiction ghost writer, however, that would be different. In fiction, she'd be making up a story from scratch, it would be her imagination and so she'd want to be acknowledged for that. 

I asked Ruby Peru about her process when it comes to ghostwriting a memoir, and she says it all starts with a series of intense interviews that allow her to get under the skin of her subject. 

From those she can create a very detailed synopsis of the book and so the client knows exactly what they are getting.  

However, she doesn't do this with her own memoir writing! 

She is currently writing a coming of age memoir, examining her teenage years, when she underwent her biggest personal transitions. Instead, she's writing her memoir as a series of short stories.

What are the memories you have from your teenage years, she asks. Why is you you remember them? Because they were the events that changed you in some way, that's why you remember them.

These are the moments that make a great short story. Why are short stories so hard to write? Because they force you to be a better writer. In many ways they're harder than writing a full length novel.

I ask Ruby about her time studying under David Foster Wallace and later with Kurt Vonnegut.

“he gave me permission to be as uptight as I wanted to be,” she says about David Foster Wallace. 

Kurt Vonnegut, she says, liked the stories best when they were ambiguous. When the internal conflict is at its highest, that's when the readers feels the most 'unsafe'. For him, that was when the story was most interesting. 

Ruby Peru also tells me how her first published novel emerged  - by making the rule that for one hour everyday she had to write something fun with strange characters and weird situations.  

She describes her book as an Upper Young Adult book, and explains that she wanted it to look like a classic children's book and so commissioned illustrator Philip Harris to do the beautiful pen and ink drawings. 

We discuss how book ideas can begin as a messy collection of plots, subplots, characters and themes, and how you don't need to stick to the classic convention of novel writing but can mix things up with short storeys, novellas coma series and serials. 

Instead of writing 100,000 plus words, she suggests trying shorter for him books as they are selling very well these days. 

We finish up our conversation with Ruby telling me about her own press, Pangloss Press, and the ways in which she helps writers, particularly with book promotion.  

She helpfully gives a rundown on all the different types of editors available and how they will help prepare your novel for publication.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• David Sedaris
• Kurt Vonnegut
• David Foster Wallace Books
• Philip Harris Illustration
• Bits Of String Too Small To Save, Ruby Peru
• Pangloss Press | Website
• www.rubyperu.com 

Associated Blog Post:

• https://emmadhesi.com/blog-post/ruby-peru/

Support the show