Authors as "Wraith-like Creatures - Andrew Crofts

On a recent Guardian blog the literary commentator, Robert McCrum, analysed some of the "genres" in the book publishing market. One of the genres he identified was "Ghost Lit".

"A surprising number of successful books," he wrote, "(bestselling memoirs especially) are written by ghost writers. But there are also ghosted novels, too. By definition these wraith-like creatures have no names and are known only to their fellow spooks – and the publishers who depend on them."

It then occurred to me that “wraith-like creatures”, pretty well sums up the whole experience of being an author.
Sitting in a Soho editing suite a couple of weeks ago, watching the rushes from the filming of my novel “The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride”, (freely available on   http://www.wattpad.com and soon to be Kindled by its original publisher), I was struck first by the changes which the scriptwriters had made to the original story in order to make it work as an episodic drama. Some of the book’s characters had vanished while others had been invented, but every so often lines that I remembered writing six or seven years ago would come singing through.
The whole book is narrated in the first person by Steffi and the screenwriters had kept that device, so lines that I originally wrote for my actress daughter to speak on YouTube  (http://youtu.be/UckoWyITGW8 ) are now being spoken by another young actress, all of us mere wraiths in the ever moving business of story-building and story-telling.

Comments

madwippitt said…
Wow! How exciting! Are you fairly happy with the screen adaptation? Were you allowed any involvement at all? It must seem odd seeing it come to life ...
Andrew Crofts said…
It was exciting and I am very pleased with the look of what they have done. They were very good about involving me along the way, although they had the final say on everything, which is a strange feeling when you are talking about your own work.

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