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need to be skilled at sifting through the way that your subject speaks, behaves and writes so that you can translate that person into a strong ghost-written piece. You won't necessarily be mimicking how that person actually writes; rather, you'll be distilling what you observe into the best possible representation of that person. Most importantly, the person you are writing for has to look at the piece and feel that he or she "could" have written it.

4. The capacity to learn new information quickly and well. Your relationship with your subjects will vary widely. I once spent a week essentially shut up in a room with the person I was ghost writing for; she was an expert on her subject and gave me clearly marked research materials so that I could quickly absorb the most important details. She closely guided me through every step of the project. On the other hand, I once wrote a speech for an executive who didn't want to be involved in the process beyond agreeing to one of three topics I suggested. I had to essentially become an "expert" for her, and, in addition to the speech, I provided her with a list of references so that she could "learn" the subject herself. As a ghost writer, you need to be able to fill in gaps in your knowledge base quickly, with or without help from your subject. One of the best compliments I ever got on my ghost writing came when a client (I worked for a company that provided ghost writing services and hadn't been hired personally by the client) read something I'd written for her and asked how many years I'd been working in her field. When I told her "three months," she was shocked because my writing showed a clear understanding of the key issues in her business. You need to be able to immerse yourself in a subject, present yourself as an expert, then shake it off and move on to the next subject.

5. An ability to turn what the customer wants into what the customer needs. As a ghost writer, you work with a lot of different kinds of people, and not all of them know what's in their best interests writing-wise. So you need to strike a balance between what your customer asks for and what will show him or her in the best possible light. That is often harder than it sounds. An example that comes to mind is the McCain-Palin reliance on the word "maverick" in their campaign materials during the 2008 presidential election. Clearly, McCain really liked the label, but I was amazed that anyone running for the highest office in the land would want

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