"You can't fake your way into ghostwriting. You have to be curious about people."

The art of inhabiting someone else's voice with executive ghostwriter Kelsey Wahl.

Kelsey Wahl wants to be creepy.

And she is. In a “creepy good genius” kind of way.

Kelsey, Senior Manager of Executive Content at Criteo, is an executive ghostwriter who’s spent years becoming unnervingly, creepily good at inhabiting other people’s voices. 

Also: Kelsey’s also been one of my best friends since we were 18. 

Because Medbury does so much executive ghostwriting, it felt like the perfect time for us to have a conversation about the ins and outs of the craft.

We talked about:

• Why we love recording our interviews with subjects.

• The beats of a good collaboration process.

• How curiosity, empathy, and an open, receptive energy are intangible but imperative aspects of this work. 

Plus:

• The time that Kelsey saw a ghost in Joshua Tree. 

• How funny it is that we ended up doing very similar work.

Kels: In the immortal words of Paul Rudd on Hot Ones: Hey, look at us. Look at us, huh? Who would have thought? Not me. 

Thank you. Love you. ♥️

Listen to the full ep here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. A few highlights from our conversation are below.

As a ghostwriter, can you do great work for someone you don't like?

Yes, I think you can. Okay, so if they're treating you poorly, that's a whole other conversation about what’s acceptable in a work setting. I think if they are someone whose ethos you support, it makes the job more fun, and you are more passionate about doing good work for them, but I think it comes down to that great quote, “Every villain is the protagonist of his own story.”

It's all empathy. Would I write something that I completely disagree with, that I think puts out an evil message into the world? No. I can't do that. But, can I work for someone who I don't agree with on everything? Or who doesn't take the same approach to humanity as I do? Yes, I can do that.

Kelsey looking at … something far away?

Can any good writer become a good ghostwriter? Or does it take a special ability?

You can't fake your way into ghostwriting. You have to be curious about people - people who are very different from you and who have very different worldviews. You can't be closed off to someone who you might be writing for.

You have to be really open to understanding their point of view, even if it’s greatly different from your own. So I think having that kind of curiosity and openness towards other people helps. It's inherent in some people, but I think people can also learn or be trained to ask questions and be curious. Once you're aware of something, just being aware of it can help you grow that skill.

Kelsey and her husband Ben. <3

How her first post-college job as a debt collector is unexpectedly relevant to ghostwriting:

The people I talked to on the phone just wanted to be listened to. They just wanted to be heard and, in a way, in my role there, you had to become an advocate for those people.

Kels at home.

I would be talking to them about their financial backgrounds. I would be talking about their lives. They'd be sharing struggles about being, like, being a single parent and having to navigate working full-time while taking care of their kids. And, I would have to go to my boss and say look, here's the rationale why they can't pay.

And you become an advocate for them. And it's similar with ghostwriting because you're spending time getting to know these people as communicators. And you could be completely different. Like, I write for people who are completely different than I am, but you have to just understand their situations and who they are and have a lot of empathy and understanding in order to best represent them.