As Told To
Everybody's got a story to tell. Sometimes they need a little bit of help. Veteran ghostwriter Daniel Paisner talks shop with his fellow collaborators and shines a light on what it means to pursue a writing life on the back of someone else’s story.
Episodes
“I never thought I would have a career in the television business,” writes podcast guest Art Bell, the founding father of the Comedy Central network and the longtime president of Court TV.
While at Comedy Central, which had its origins at HBO as “The Comedy Channel,” Art helped to launch the careers of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, and to provide a platform for up-and-coming comedians. He also found the ti...
"Comedy writers learn early on that we have a high degree of anonymity," writes podcast guest Alan Zweibel in his memoir Laugh Lines: My Life Helping Funny People Be Funnier. "Our words are spoken publicly by others who often have famous faces. Or by unknown people on their way to having famous faces."
As one of the founding writers on Saturday Night Live, Alan’s words were given voice by a cast of virtu...
How much does ego play a role in the art and craft of a book collaborator?
That’s a question at the heart of this conversation with #1 New York Times best-selling ghostwriter Rachel Holtzman, co-author of more than 60 books on topics ranging from wellness and spirituality, to cooking and entertaining, including collaborations with such celebrated personalities as Shaquille O’Neal,...
Adam Ross’s second novel, Playworld, is one of the best-reviewed books of the year. A story “dipped in molten nostalgia and flecked with love and sadness,” according to The Washington Post, it was hailed immediately upon publication by The Los Angeles Times as “extraordinary” and by The New York Times as “a gorgeous cat’s cradle of a book.”
He is also the author of a previous novel, Mr. Peanut, which was...
“Sometimes our own stories get snatched from us, hidden in darkness for years,” writes podcast guest Salwa Emerson, “until it’s time to reclaim them.”
Salwa is well-known to publishers as an author, editor and ghostwriter, specializing in memoirs, thought-leadership books, and book proposals. To hear her clients tell it, she has a way of bringing those...
“My job was to dance so well that it didn’t matter who favored me or why.”
That’s a line from the compelling new memoir by world-renowned ballerina Joy Womack, “as told to” podcast guest Elizabeth Shockman. Together, in (dare we say it?) balletic prose, the two recount Womack’s storied career as the first American woman to dance under contract for the Bolshoi Ballet Theater in Moscow.
David Peisner is a freelance journalist and ghostwriter/collaborator based in Atlanta. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Esquire, Playboy, and other publications. His first book collaboration—with “Steve-O,” the legendary co-star of the legendarily out there MTV reality series “Jackass”—grew out of a magazine assignment, taking Peisner on a sidelong career turn he hadn’t anti...
“We all have to figure out our own ways to carve out our own creativity,” says New York Times best-selling ghostwriter Cynthia DiTiberio about finding time to do her own writing alongside her collaborative work. “Not that our creativity doesn’t go into our ghostwritten books, but you can’t claim it in the same way.”
Cynthia knows what it takes to create a successful book. She started her pu...
We’re taking a bit of a pivot here at the podcast factory with this one, pinching from the season-opening episode of Writer’s Bone, our flagship podcast at the Writer’s Bone Podcast Network. “As Told To” producer and Writer’s Bone host and founder Daniel Ford featured a conversation with the writing team of Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, co-creators of the enchantingly poignan...
“The work that we do is actually very difficult to detach from when you’re writing in somebody’s voice,” notes veteran collaborator Laura Morton on the emotional connection she often feels when channeling her clients’ stories.
Laura comes by this observation honestly, after spending more than thirty years helping to tell other people’s stories. In that time, she has written more than 60 books, including 22 New York Times bestsel...
“You’d be amazed at how far you can get in life having no idea what the subjunctive mood is,” writes Benjamin Dreyer, retired managing editor and copy chief of the Random House division of Penguin Random House. “As if it’s not bad enough that English has rules, it also has moods.”
Yes, it does. Happily, the mood of the room for writers in Benjamin’s good hands as a copyeditor was cheerful and patient and winning… and, for the most ...
This episode originally aired June 20, 2023
First-time author David Jacks, a veteran video editor and music supervisor, ran into legendary music producer Peter Asher at a Santa Monica taco joint in 2003 and asked if he could interview him. Jacks, a long-time admirer of the man said to be the inspiration for Mike Myers’ “shagadelic” Austin Powers character, who first came to prominence as on...
Here at the podcast factory, we’re thrilled to welcome back novelist, translator, collaborator and cultural critic Seth Rogoff to talk about his new novel—a thrilling and unsettling coda to Franz Kafka’s unfinished masterwork The Castle.
Seth joined us in Season 2 (Ep. #35) to talk about the also thrilling and decidedly unconventional memoir he helped to write with ESPN basketball analyst and former NBA ...
“In general, magazine profiles are to biographies as inland lakes are to oceans,” writes the late entertainment journalist and ghostwriter Bill Zehme in The New York Times best-selling Carson the Magnificent. “Far less sprawling and easier to navigate.”
This is true—and readers need look no further than Zehme’s latest (and last) book, completed posthumously, for confirmation. Zehme, who collaborated on memoirs with Jay Leno and R...
This episode originally aired on Feb. 14, 2023
“I moved on to the next thing I was going to write,” says the noted dramatist and television writer Winnie Holzman, recalling the cancellation of her critically-acclaimed series “My So-Called Life,” after just one season. “That’s what we do as writers. We move on to the next thing.”
Indeed. In Winnie Holzman’s case, one of those “next things” turned out to be the book for the hit Bro...
Hal Donaldson’s faith-based humanitarian organization Convoy of Hope is a magnificent agent of change. In partnership with local churches, businesses, civic organizations, and government agencies, the organization is deeply committed to healing the world in all its broken places, through children’s feeding initiatives, community outreach and disaster response.
Join us as we chat with novelist and screenwriter Aaron Philip Clark, co-author of the just-published thriller The Accomplice, written in collaboration with rapper and entertainment mogul Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.
“Lots of ambitious books announce themselves,” writes Lauren Christensen in The New York Times Book Review of podcast guest Betsy Lerner’s debut novel Shred Sisters. “This one doesn’t need to.”
High praise for a first-time novelist, but that’s not surprising considering Betsy’s long and distinguished career as an editor and literary agent. A born storyteller (and, story-sharer), Betsy has helped to shape our literary landscape, as ...
Over the course of her nearly forty-year career, singer-songwriter Jill Sobule has earned a singular spot in the American songbook. Best known for her breakout 1995 singles “Supermodel” (from the “Clueless” soundtrack) and “I Kissed a Girl” (which came out more than 10 years before the Katy Perry hit of the same name), her quirky, heartfelt, cheer-filled songs are difficult to categorize: she sings about the death pen...
“The task of writing is to take a character and put him up a tree and start throwing rocks at him,” notes novelist, screenwriter, comic book writer, and television showrunner J. Michael Straczynski. The two-time Hugo Award-winning author is perhaps best known as the creator of the television series “Babylon 5”, and as the screenwriter for the 2008 Oscar-nominated Clint Eastwood film “Changeling.” He is also the author...
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