Deborah Brandt is a historian and scholar of writing. In her recent book The Rise of Writing, she studies the history of power as related to writing and how that history has changed over time. Brandt defines ghostwriting as a kind of professional writing where an author takes on “substantial parts part of a composing process for which someone else […] will be credited” (Brandt 31). Ghostwriting is controversial because it destabilizes a traditional idea of authorship; namely, we are often taught that the author who originates a text has some kind of power, at the very least in their association with a text they produced. Ghostwriting works in the opposite way: the ghostwriter as author lends their words to someone (or something) else’s name. While the ghostwriter gets paid for their work, they don’t receive public notoriety for their work. Obama’s speechwriter for his “We the People” speech is an example of this phenomenon.

Brandt interviewed 60 professional writers, 22 of whom did “some occasional ghostwriting” (32) as part of their job. Today we’re going to consider possible connections between ghostwriting, writing with artificial intelligence, and how these composing processes have any impact on your own thinking and practice of writing.

For Discussion

Take a look at pages 36-37 of Brandt’s text on Blackboard. The italicized portions are excerpts from Brandt’s interviews with ghostwriters; the non-italicized portions indicate Brandt’s analysis of those interviews. After you read to yourself (you may want to take some notes!), we’ll come together to discuss the following:

• What general reactions do you have to these examples of ghostwriting? Do you have a favorite quotation?
• Describe the range of ghostwriting experiences in this passage.
• How would you describe power, authority, or agency in these different moments?
• How do these stories from ghostwriters align with or contradict your own ideas about authoring, writing, and agency?

HOMEWORK

READ Morrison’s “Meta-Writing: AI and Writing.”

SKIM Doyal et al’s “ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence in Medical Writing.”

Both texts are available on Blackboard.

Work Cited

Brandt, Deborah. The Rise of Writing. Cambridge UP, 2014.