Hey y’all, it’s Lynn and Cynthia! Welcome back to Another Way to Think About It—the show where we ditch the “right” answers and lean into honest conversations about life’s messier, more meaningful questions. We’re so glad you’re here.

In this episode, we had an incredible, eye-opening conversation with our longtime friend and veteran ghostwriter, Kat Moore. Kat has developed and ghostwritten over 15 books across memoir, self-help, YA, and fiction over her 17-year career. But as we found out, her role goes far beyond “putting words on a page.” She’s part therapist, part confidant, part advocate, and always a witness to the richness (and pain) of her client’s lives. Together, we pulled back the curtain on the ghostwriting process—what it really takes (emotionally, professionally, even spiritually) to help someone else share their story, and why the act of storytelling is so deeply human.

This episode runs the gamut from practical questions—how do you know if a client is ready to open up?—to big-picture reflections on what it means to be seen and heard, how to hold someone’s story without judgment, and all the messy, imperfect humanity along the way. Whether you’re a writer, a reader, or simply someone with a story in your heart, there’s something in this conversation for you.

What We Discussed

1. The process of ghostwriting memoirs, including trauma narratives, celebrity stories, and fiction
2. How Kat establishes trust and emotional safety with clients—and knows when the fit isn’t right
3. Why ghostwriting feels a lot like therapy (for both writer and subject!)
4. The emotional boundaries ghostwriters must set while still bringing empathy and care to their work
5. The unique role of being a silent partner: carrying emotional weight without public recognition
6. The difference between factual truth and emotional truth, and how both play into memoir writing
7. Why every story is worth telling—yes, even if you’re “just” an ordinary person
8. The transformative power of being witnessed, and how storytelling is central to our sense of connection
9. The wisdom and life experience held by elders and why their stories matter, especially in a culture obsessed with youth
10. Some hard but funny truths about generational divides, family history, and what makes for real connection in our modern world

If this conversation gave you another way to think about ghostwriting—or your own story—we’d love for you to stick around and join our growing community. Hit subscribe (right down there!) so you never miss an episode, and if you resonated with what Kat shared, drop us a note or share this episode with a friend. Real conversations, real stories, real connections—that’s why we’re here.

With love,

Lynn & Cynthia

Don’t forget: Everyone has a story. Maybe it’s time to tell yours—or simply listen more deeply to someone else’s.

Welcome to Another Way to Think About It, where real conversations replace right answers. Where Lynn and Cynthia, longtime friends, exploring life's messy questions with humor and heart. Today's episode, we're going to interview my longtime good friend Catherine Moore. Who is a ghostwriter, writer, and y'all, there's so much more to this woman. She's amazing. She has, uh, 15 years plus experience in manuscript development for memoir, self-help, YA, and fiction books. She's been a ghostwriter for 15 plus years, uh, 15 plus books, excuse me. Motivated and skilled to work one-on-one with authors.

She's much more than that, and I want to make sure that we give you a peek into just a little bit about what it means to be a ghostwriter from Kat's perspective and what it is that she does. Because Cynthia and I, when we were having an informal conversation with her last week, found out— I think you did too, Cynthia— that we found out that Kat brought a lot more to it than just being a writer.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's fascinating.

I mean, without further ado, Hi, Kat.

Hi, Kat.

Hi, honey.

Are you having a good day so far?

Yeah. Yeah, I am. I am.

Yeah.

Okay. So when, when you are with a client, when you're present with a client, how do you know the client is really ready and open, that opens up to you? How does that work? Do you ask certain questions? What is that format when you're initially introducing them?

Well, it's a lot of times it depends on the subject matter. And if it's somebody like, if I've done like Tech Bro, like how they became famous, I've um, done, you know, big egos, right? Yeah. A lot of big egos. And, um, the ones that where you, it has to click. Are the ones that I sort of have put into my box that I call sort of trauma memoirs, how people have experienced like severe trauma either in the military or in life or sexual trauma, violence, and how they've gotten over that. That's where my connection is really, really important. For the ones that are just like what I call my bread and butter, the ones that, how I became famous ones, celebrity memoirs, if you will. We have to like each other.

We have to have a modicum of respect for one another. But the ones where I really need to make that connection of trust is, are the trauma memoirs.

And so for you, Kat, um, when someone hands you their life story and says, tell this for me, what do you feel first as a human, not as a writer?

Well, first of all, they don't hand me their life story. I have to solicit it. Oh yeah. That's all. And it's it's a, a process depending on sort of what the story is and what we want to tell. It can go, it can take me 3 months of development or it can take me 6 months of development. And that's what the fiction book as well, because their story in the fiction book is all, it always has a life of its own as well. And so that question process that I've come up with, and I sort of have a template from 17 years of doing this of like, okay, I know it's going to be this kind of story.

I need to develop the narrative this way. We come up with an outline and then I ask questions around that. Yeah. Okay. And we have basically an interview process that's very similar. And I've been told this thousands of times, like therapy. Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially with the trauma memoirs, even with the, how did I become famous? Because, you know, a lot of times if you're sitting with somebody who is, um, famous in their world for whatever they're famous for. It could be a famous cowboy. It could be, you know, the, the biggest lobbyist in Texas for oil and gas, whatever they're famous for. Nobody, if you follow that person or that person is famous in your world, you already know they're famous. You want to have a connection to them on what you see yourself in that person. So you have to humanize that person and get them down to a human level. And tell their story. That's why everybody goes into their childhoods because we all have all had a childhood.

And so how do you, like, if you're reading a story about, I don't know, Angelina Jolie and you're like, God, she's so beautiful and she's done all these things. Well, she has this, I'm making this up. I don't know this, but she had this real fucked up relationship with her aunt or whatever it is that needs to be in the story because that's going to make connections to your readers because we all have that, you know. So I'm always looking for those sort of nuggets.

How the hell do you establish that trust, Kat? Cause that, I mean, I bet you that I wonder if your experience has been that a lot of people don't realize it's going to go there, even though they're asking you to do a memoir.

Yeah. Especially the big egos. They're like, yeah, you know, I was commissioned to do this book. I have 20 million followers on Instagram and they want me to write a book and blah, blah, blah. I get sent to people and, um, you know, I'll say, bro, that's great. You know, like, okay, great. You have 20 million followers or whatever you have. That's wonderful.

I'm so proud of you. But who are you? Yeah. Yeah. And what people like to talk about themselves and you just have to ask questions and, and give them the time and the space. And I think the, I don't know how you develop trust. I mean, I really don't know the answer to that question. But I think you just can't sit do and it.

How do you feel it in your gut, Kat? How do you feel it when it's happening? Do you feel it in your body?

Um, I can tell you when I don't feel it.

Okay. That's cool.

Yeah. I mean, I usually, I mean, there's, you know, I've done 22, 23 books now and I, there's 4 or 5 that that came to publication and I saw them through. I didn't walk away from them that I was like, you know, I don't feel good about my relationship with this client or this person or whatever it was, the subject matter. But I saw it through because I, you know, that was my job. And it was always because there was an element of untruth. And I knew in my gut that they were not ready to tell the truth around a certain subject or they had a big reason to lie or whatever the reason was. And like I said, 24 out of 22 is not bad.

You know, that's really interesting. Don't you think, Cynthia?

Absolutely. Because that was one of my questions, similar questions. It's like, you know, if somebody doesn't want to open up to you, you're asking them a particular pointed question so you can further along the story, so to speak. Then what do you do? Do you have to let them go? You do.

So I've walked away. Yeah, I've walked away from projects for sure. Yeah. And you know, if I was doing this for the money, I wouldn't walk away from it and I would have an agent and I would do all the celeb— I know I've done the celebrity stuff, of course, but you know, I'd be in a different echelon and a different ballgame, but I'm not going to sell myself out like that and I'm not going to sell them out like that, you know, and that's what I tell them, you know, I just, I just don't think you're ready to tell the truth. It doesn't mean you're not telling the truth. It just means you're not ready. And that's what, that's why I say it's like therapy. Because, you know, you go, if you have a problem and you go and talk to a therapist, it probably takes you about, I don't know, 2 months, 3 months to really get to the core issue if you're really looking to solve the problem.

And you still, that therapist has to get into those layers that you've built to defend yourself from whatever you're hiding from.

Right.

But I'm very, very fascinated. How do you, when you're writing the story for them, how do you protect your, let's say, your emotional boundaries, you know, while being immersed into somebody else's life?

That's a good question. It's hard for me. I would say this, like the two that come to mind that have really gotten through my armor Or one was this was like, I had a child and at the time I have a child, but at the time I was writing the book, my daughter was the same age as this client who had suffered a sexual trauma. Oh, so I was so just on tenterhooks around protecting my child from that. And that was a very hard book for me to write because it was almost like I was, I would come home from these, these intense interviews. And then see my baby who was the same age as my client was when this had happened to her. And it was just like, oh God, you know, and then the other one was, um, a survivor of, um, a bombing in Afghanistan and he had lost his legs and he had all these like physical traumas, which I've suffered too in my life. So that was very hard for me because it's, I have to almost like, and I wish I could be a therapist.

Like if I could go back and do it all over again, I would probably be a therapist because basically what I do is therapy. And there's so many like workshops on memoir writing and how it helps you and it solves your problems. And, you know, there's been a lot of things that are written about that. And I think, um, there's a professor at UT. I went and sat in on some of his classes and he has a book about it as well. That just sort of like writing down the bones of any of yourself and your problem, it just releases it.

You know, well, that's interesting, Kat, because so I'm curious about, you know, how kind of folding into the questions that we asked previously, how does somebody get prepared for this? I mean, if somebody's like half-ass, you know, uh, disassociated coming to you to write a memoir and then they get into this and it's like, whoa, I mean, do you have any prep Stuff.

That you— if it's a trauma memoir, uh, my— in my contract, you have to sign up to say that you've done therapy around this issue and that acknowledges I'm not a therapist and that I have to build a narrative around a subject matter. And in building that narrative, I will be asking very intimate questions because we have to tell the story, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

So if it is a trauma-based memoir, that is in my contract that the client has to specify that they have already been to professionals for this particular problem and that they have quote unquote worked through it before they write the book. Because so much comes up when we do write the book, because we go back to the originating sort of incident, the igniting incident for the story, and we have to structure and we have to build around it, and they have to have been able to have done that work. I can tell you not all of them have. And that's, that's always been hard for me because I want to help them, you know, and I don't necessarily have the tools to do that because I'm not a trained therapist.

And so have you ever had it happen where somebody gets really into this and they feel very vulnerable and exposed and they're like, okay, I don't want to publish this?

One time that's happened. One time. Yeah.

I could see me getting chickened out, you know, before I did a lot of work on myself. That would have terrified me, you know, but you know, in what you were talking about, Kat, it seems like, would you ever be willing if a reputable therapist wanted to do a workshop and have you come in and help them do it with the memoir writing?

Oh yeah. I mean, I've gone to the prisons and I've done that and I've, I've worked with people and I've done books for therapists. Very cool. And that's been very helpful for me to have, especially because they're friends. I mean, every single one of my clients with no exception is a friend now because it's a very intimate process. Even if we're telling a book fiction, even if I'm editing or helping you write your YA. They become my friend because it's such an intimate— I'm picking your brain. Yeah.

I'm saying, why did you write it this way? Why did you make this decision? You know, like, so you become a confidant. And it— I can't say that, um, I would ever like go into a therapist's office and work within a group, but I have— I've done memoir writing in the prisons. But you could do that. Interesting thing about that. And that was really hard. And I don't think I could ever do that again because every single woman, every single one had been a victim of sexual trauma.

Yeah.

And that's hard, you know, that's really hard. Yeah.

Why do you think people feel like a deep need to be witnessed through their story? You know, all.

Well, I mean, we are storytellers. That's how we connect as humans, you know? And if you think about before, you know, before the printing press, when the sort of traveling circus came to town or the maestros or the traveling, you know, storytellers, the guys that got up on the back of their old wagons and made a stage and told stories of the puppeteers. That's what Shakespeare, all of his plays were based on things that had been traveling around Europe in the back of minstrels' wagons for hundreds of years. And those are, those are stories. And, and we need people to witness our story. I think that's a big part of our humanity.

Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

Substance.

I mean, there's a reason memoir is the best-selling. I mean, it's always the best-selling, whether it's celebrity or not, you know, it's, and it's the best movies people make.

You know, I love reading memoirs.

Love them.

Everybody does. Everybody.

Yeah, that's cool. I love that. So, uh, you know, I'm, uh, when I was thinking about doing my memoir, I mean, remember being dissed by a family member and told, what do you have to talk about that other people would want to, you know, listen to or read? And I'm like, you know, but I've read enough memoirs of people that weren't famous that You know, actually, who was that girl, the Glass Castle girl, Kat?

Oh, Jeanette. Um, I can't remember her last name, but yeah, that, that's, yeah, she's just a normal lady whose mom happened to be homeless and crazy. And yeah, it's intriguing, you know, that we all live quiet lives of desperation, all of us. And when we find that connection, you know, that You know, I'm just, you know, just, you know, I'm just a mom or I'm just a this. You're never just that. You know, you're never just that.

Cynthia came up with a good question when we were looking at what we could ask you about. I love this one, Cyndi. What emotional weight do ghostwriters carry that people rarely discuss?

Yeah, that one is interesting. Because you carry, you have to carry because you care. Writing somebody else, you're validating somebody else's existence, so to speak.

That's a twofold question. It's what emotional weight does it carry for me in order to do my job, to be a good ghostwriter and tell the best story I can for my client is I really have to learn to not sit in judgment. And that's a lesson that's ongoing. You know, I mean, it's very, very hard not to sit from this sort of like throne of, you know, I'm here and you did this wrong or what. It's so, and it's so, cause if you do that, that comes out in the writing and I have to be in their voice. So yeah.

And it clouds the space probably cause you know how judgments are, they're actually, actually judgments are fucking dark. You know, if you think about it and we all do it, but they like, they put, You, they just put a wedge in any kind of connection anyway to people. So, yeah.

And then the flip side of that is, and I'm kind of, I'm struggling with this now. It's like, I, I'm so, I love what I do. I mean, I really do. I love what I do, but in the same vein, it's like, I never get any recognition and I am a writer, you know? So from a very personal perspective, it's like sometimes, especially when a book does well. I'm just like, ah, and I can't say it because all my stuff is, almost all my stuff is NDA. So it's like, ah, you know, it's like, and I have a lot of, um, you know, like, ah, you know.

You change famous people, I'll say it.

Yeah. You know, you change that the right way because they'll go into edits without me and they'll sit with editors at the publishing houses and then, you know, this, it's a game. The publishing game is one of the biggest games in the world and they're going to do anything to a book to make it sell or to make it marketable. And what does the market want? And what does it, you know, and they'll beef up a part of it. They'll take out a part of it, you know, and my, my job is to get them a manuscript so they can take it to the publisher. That's my job. And then I don't go, I hate the publishing business because it's grotesque and I just can't be in it because I judge it, you know, speaking of judgment, because it's not truthful and it's not honest. And what I do is based on truth and honesty and no judgment.

It's amazing that any decent book or movie ever gets created.

Now, I mean, now they're saying it's like 15 to 20 years to bring something to market because there's so many people with their hands in the pockets of stuff.

Well, do you actually take it to the publishers? Like the manuscript?

No, the client comes to me. The client comes to me.

They come to you, but then you got the finished manuscript.

I have the finished product. And they take, they usually give it to their agent or they give it to their PR people. And then the PR people take it to whomever is going to publish it.

And then the nightmare of unconscious people begins.

And I've had to, you know, I've had a, I've had like probably like 8 to 10, 10 of my clients go, I want you to make sure they don't bastardize my story.

Oh, I'd like that.

So I have to go in and be my client. I have to be the advocate for my client, and I'm not nice, and I'm not in that business, and you don't have to employ me, so I don't give a shit. So I will say things at tables that, like, by the way, I forgot.

To say that Kat is a lawyer, and, uh, she also— I'm proud of this too, Kat. She got a full 4-year scholarship for basketball for the University of Alabama.

So, back in the day when girls didn't get, you know, I was a big Title IX girl.

So, she's not somebody to be messed with.

And, but that's the thing. Like, I don't have, the only job I have is to represent my client or to write for my client or to be the voice of my client. And that's sort of the reputation. My guests that I have, especially the ones that are like, don't, I don't want to change it. I don't want to change this word. That's what we said. That's how we talked, especially my like big, like I call them my like big ego Texas politician or rich politician or rich guys you don't know that are running the things behind the scenes and they write their books and they're not changing a thing, but they don't want to sit at the tables anymore. They want to go be with their grandkids at their million flake house, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. And I, I get to advocate and I don't have to worry about anybody because I don't care. You know, I don't care.

That's so amazing.

That's one of the privileges of getting older, may I say. Another question that Cynthia came up with that I love is, is there a difference between factual truth and emotional truth in ghostwriting?

Yeah. Well, I mean, we have to be— you have to be very careful when you talk about other people and other people's lives. If it's their life and their emotional truth, then you can say what they say because that's their life and their emotional truth. But if we're talking about, especially if there's like an incident and legally speaking, there's ways that we have to write. In order so we don't bring anybody else to the table in sort of criminal proceeding, or they have a window to open up criminal negligence. Are you, or you're, I mean, we all have a First Amendment right, but you still have to say the memoir from your emotional truth. So when there are times where I have to delve into sort of factual instances, I'll pull police reports. I'll, um, I'll get witness statements.

I'll call cops if they were involved. I'll call witnesses if they were involved. And most of the time my clients already approached the people and said, you know, I'm writing a book. This person's going to call you, you know, so it's not like I'm coming in in an adversarial way at all. Um, which is nice, but that would be fascinating.

Wow.

But you can tell like they're like. There's a really good way, like, if I have an emotional truth and we have siblings and we have families, like, you can remember an incident from your childhood, but it's from your lens. And then your brother or your sister can see it and it's from an entirely different lens because they were over here behind the scenes looking at it from this direction. Yes. So I always have to go with my client because it's my client's story.

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So if every book is a mirror, what do ghostwriters end up seeing about humanity? Yeah.

That we all have a story. That we all have a story. We all have a story. And we all want to be heard. And we all need to be heard, you know? Not necessarily by the whole world, but, you know, we need to have our truth recognized in some way, shape, or form.

So, Kat, has it been your experience, like, if you get somebody that may be from a very different political, religious, whatever place, and you talk to them where you see where it boinks you in a way where you're like, huh, I see, I'm seeing things differently, or I don't know. I want it to be a good thing. I want you to, you know, when you're talking to somebody, you know, and you get into the human aspect of it, recognizing that we're really just All human underneath all this crap, right?

And that's the thing. Like, we all want to love our families. We all want, if we have children, we want our children to be safe and to be educated. We want the people in our lives to be safe and we want to be taken care of and we want to be loved. And that knows no political or cultural, it knows no boundary. And that, and that's what you have to focus on when you're the ghostwriter. And yes, I have had clients that I have been like, wow, okay, all right, you see it from that perspective and okay, I get it. And if I go back in time and I ask those sort of questions that build that narrative structure, their worldview or political view or way that they see dominating the economic force that they're dominating is justified, you know.

So I can't argue with that, you know.

No, no.

That would be a great book in itself.

Yeah, Lynn's your cheerleader and I'm right behind her.

Yeah, taking that framework of what you're seeing and that justification of the person and really exploring that. And I would want to go interview professors and scientists that are in that social realm and everything else and getting different pieces of information. Because for some of us, I think that would educate the hell out of us about— I would hope that it would give us the ability to pause and the ability to take a deep breath and the ability to listen to each other and just, you know, have expanded awareness of The impact of everything on us, you know, because of the social fucking mess we're in right now.

We've always been in a social mess.

I love you for saying that. It's not like this is a little more intense of a time. No, we're always there.

This is— I mean, I tell— I say this all the time. Henry VIII, just read Wolf Hall. It was fucked up. You know, nothing has fucking changed. But what hasn't changed is that we are human and we have a story to tell and we want people to hear our story. And, and the thing that we have stopped learning how to do is listen.

Right.

That's right.

And listen without judgment.

That's right. Well, I think the Native American elders, you know, from my experience with that, uh, people do listen, you know, their, their circles do listen and they pass and the wisdom, but we just don't have that interspersed in society as a whole, which I would love if we did.

We barely even smile at each other when we're walking down the street or wherever, you know. If we just smiled even— I know that humanity aspect, we're kind of fucking losing it. But I'm— we're trying to bring it back just a teeny bit.

Yeah, I, I— it's I mean, if we just turn off the noise and we just talk to each other and we build community where we're face to face and we're not in judgment and we are just listening to each other's humanity and each other's story and we stop being told what we're supposed to think, I think it would be a totally different world. And there is, I mean, there's communities where you go into, like I'm doing a book right now for. A real famous guy who lives out in LaGrange, you know, and he goes to the coffee shop. I meet him at the coffee shop every Wednesday with his buddies, you know, and he's a very, very, very, very rich man, very powerful, very interesting story. And he sits there with the guy who, you know, sells the John Deere equipment, and they're best friends.

I love that simplicity, right?

And that's great. And I love those guys, and they're And they're all kind of different in the way they see each other, but they're all real worried about the grandkids being on the goddamn phones. And it's great. And they're at the coffee shop and they're having a chat and these old guys playing chess and you're like, wow, this is, it's not what we're being told is what I see. Because when I sit down with my, and I mean, my very first client, when you met her, You remember Anna Rosenberg from Britain? The Black woman? Oh, yes.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Incredible fucking story. Incredible fucking story. And how she didn't go to prison is beyond me because her life was unbelievably abusive, what happened to her. And it's just a testament to her human will and her human connection. And she's my kind of— I mean, it was my first project. So obviously, I was real tender and I didn't know what I was doing. Like we all, our very first time.

Yes.

And, and we've— she's like my daughter's second grandmother now, but she's, she is so horrified by how people have lost their ability to talk to each other. And all they see is what, you know, they're, they're being force-fed on their fucking phones to see. Yeah. And she's upset. I mean, she's in her 70s now and she's sort of like got some health issues and can't really leave and. But she used to be all over North Bristol and knew everybody. Like, she started the homeless community. And like, you know that she and.

I are connected on Facebook, Kat.

I love Anna. I'd love— she's Nana Anna. She's my daughter's other grandmother. I mean, she's fantastic. But you know, that those kind of people are out there, and they— what they're— what we need to look at and focus and celebrate. And those people that don't see— I mean, she was doing like homeless meals and stuff for women in hijabs, and she didn't know anything about the Muslim faith, and She was just like, they're homeless. They need my help. And, and, and it's, it's interesting because she still doesn't see what the news is telling her about this horrible problem.

She's just like, they're, they're just people who need help and we just need to focus on that. And I always think about her, you know, I was like, God, if, if she can get over the issues in our life that she had, we can all get over our issues and see each other for who we are.

I love your humanity on all of this, and I'm really fascinated by what attracted you to even start. I know you're a writer, you know.

That'S your— Yeah, well, I didn't have a job. I moved, I moved to Britain. I married my husband who's British, and I had been living in Mexico. And then I came back to America and I started, got my old job back. I was a mass tort lawyer for the Breast Implant Settlement Fund. And um, I, I had to have some surgeries and, and I ended up going to visit some friends and I met my husband and I was like, I'm just gonna marry this guy and move to Britain with no plan, as you do. uh, you And, and, know, we lived outside of Bristol in the countryside and, um, my best friend from Mexico who's also a writer, she got approached by this Channel 4 documentary team and said, hey, we're doing this documentary on this woman in Bristol who started this homeless organization, and she needs to write a book because we're going to put her on the circuit, you know, and they made some money off her. And, you know, Radio 4 did a whole series, and Anna didn't want to do it because most writers have huge egos and they want their own work to be in the world with their own name on it.

And I couldn't work legally. I can say this now because I don't live in Britain. Yeah. And so they were like, well, do you want to do it? And we'll just pay Anna. And Anna gave me the money because it was ghostwriting. So who was going to know anyway? Right. And so we, I interviewed her and I, I watched some YouTube videos and I kind of read some books on how to write a memoir. I had no idea what I was doing.

I mean, I had an MFA, but it was like, that's for creative writing. You know, that doesn't teach you how to narratively structure a memoir. I just went out into the library and got a fuck ton of really good memoirs and read them and was like,, oh, they did it this way and they did it this way. And I sort of came up with a plan and then interviewed her and wrote the book. And then she went on the scene and there was like a Radio 4 series for her. And then this independent publishing company in Britain sort of published it for her under the universe of Channel 4. And then the BBC picked it up. And then from there, once I got my citizenship or my immigration status, I got my indefinite leave to remain, then I was allowed to work.

And once I was allowed to work, then this publishing house hired me to write all these sort of B-celebrity books. And that's how I got into it.

And, and two things, I think I have her book somewhere here in my house. And also I, somewhere in the ethernet from my blog talk radio interviews, I interviewed Anna.

You did.

Yeah.

When she came to visit.

So, but Cindy Hughes thought well enough about you, my friend, to refer people to you.

Is Cindy hoping— That was not an NDA. I can talk about that book. And that was very interesting because, you know, and this happens a lot with my clients that want to write a fiction book, especially if they're a little bit older and they're like, it's literally the story of everything that happened to them in their life. But they want to make it fiction for whatever reason. And I'm like, well, this is kind of your memoir. You have all these tangents from your life coming in from all these different directions and you're like, okay, let's make it fiction. Like, I'm like, you sure you don't want to make it a memoir? But this particular client did not want to make it a memoir. He wanted it to be in this particular way.

And it was a lot. It was a lot. It was like, I told people it was like, a Mexican telenovela where you have like a million different people coming in from all different rooms and he killed so-and-so and he's done this and she's back from the dead. Like, it was like that. And he was like, marry all these storylines together. And I was like, okay, all right, let's do this.

We'll pull that together. Well, what, you know, like in the big scheme of things in Kat's life, doing what you've been doing, What is the most transformative thing that it's brought to you and has changed your life? You know?

That's a really good question.

Because you obviously care about people.

I mean, there's so many people that I've met from all different walks of life, but, um, I think when you're faced with like severe trauma, like when, like, Like no legs or no legs and no arms or whatever it is. And you're on your own and there's no help coming. You are the person you've been waiting for. Meeting those people and seeing what they've done with their life has transformed me to be like, yeah, okay, so I didn't get paid last week. Fuck it. You know, like I still have my arms and legs, you know, like perspective. Yeah, I mean, everything is— and it's really pitiful, especially the military survivors that have survived horrific attacks and horrific things our country has done to them and left them in the fucking dust to just marinate in their own horror. That, and not to be angry about that and to still be proud Americans and to still be who they are.

Has transformed me to be like, it's all relative, you know?

So.

Yeah, I would think those particular stories have really made me see things differently.

Yeah. Wow.

Lane, do you have any other questions or, Kat, do you have anything you wanna say? Sorry, Lane, hang on one second.

Is there anything I wanna say? I think everybody should tell their story, especially in this day and age, like so many like you can go on YouTube, you can use an AI program is why I'm losing a lot of work right now, but it's coming back to me because everybody needs a good editor. But I think you can, you need to tell our, we need to tell our stories. We need storytelling nights. We need essay nights. We need, you know, checkers day. We need coffee days in little shitty towns. We need to still keep our humanity and our connection. And I think that's telling our stories.

Oh my God, Elaine, this is beautiful. There's two— my mind's clicking off right now.

Just— there's two questions, uh, that I wanted to make sure we asked you. One was, what permission do you wish more people would give themselves before they ever try to tell their story?

Right, to live their life first. I've had a lot of people come because financially it was very viable for them at that moment in time because they were popping or whatever, for whatever reason in the zeitgeist. And they're they're not, not mature enough yet to own their own story.

Oh, they're half baked.

They haven't lived enough. I, yeah, they haven't been.

And it's, there's, there's not necessarily an age to it. And I don't want to say you have to be 40 or you have to be 50 or whatever it is. You need to have lived a life and a life of sort of like learning what grief is, learning what trauma is, learning what loss is, and dealing with that in an adult— I don't want to use the word adult— in a manner in which you've overcome.

Okay. Here's another one. If you could speak directly to someone listening, Who's carrying a story they never told? What would you want them to know?

Yeah.

Somebody was listening to us and have a story that they want to put.

It out there, right? What do they do?

I think about this all the time because, um, you know, my dad was in a dementia care home and he lived a long time because when he went in, he was super healthy. And normally you got like 3 years. He got 5 and a half. And there's so many stories of especially older people. They have amazing stories. They have amazing things that they have, they have overcome. And one of the things I always used to think about is like a friend of mine out in San Francisco started a thing where you can ask a question once a week and then the older person writes it down and then they bind it up and they make it a book. It's not really a book.

It's like a question and answer session that they bind. But that, but I think that's a really beautiful thing for people to do, especially in, unfortunately in old folks homes or in, and just to be able to like put, I mean, if I could like do something and give back, I would go to like retirement communities and start a program where I would implement going in and let people that are in those programs tell their stories.

Kat, this reminds me, y'all, I have to tell this. When I had my really bad car wreck, when I drove off an overpass and I was in the hospital forever, one of the friends of mine then, Debbie Maxson, her family owned a nursing home. And they told the little old ladies and men in the nursing home about me and all the stuff I'd gone through. Cause there was a bunch of different weird connections that happened from the policeman that found me to everything. And I got all these beautiful letters from every one of those people. Oh honey, you know, just loving letters. There was wisdom letters. There was cookie recipes.

There was just pure love. You know, it just, it just was so, I just loved it. I loved it.

And my favorite Instagram account that I've ever followed, and he just passed away and his wife passed away. Was this older couple. He, they started it when they were in their 80s during COVID and they were British and they were just, she would like knit and he would talk about how much he loved Pauline and he would show what she knitted and it would be like a tea cozy. And he would be like, I'm planting my spring bulbs, but my knees are bad. I mean, and I just, it was like, we have done such a disservice to our, our elders.

I love you for saying that.

And I, I just wish people, like, everybody's like, oh, she's young, she's beautiful. She says she doesn't know fucking shit about life. She's a fucking Instagram model. She's a dumbass. offense. No.

It's true.

That's true.

Now, now you've got it inspired in me, Lynn. We're going into old folks homes.

Why not? I'm just kidding.

Here's the thing, it's like, why don't.

You go into some of these places and talk to these people? They have real life fucking wisdom, you know? Yeah, yeah.

And our, our own selves that are aging as well. Look at your story, Kat. Lynn, I mean, one day I'm going to interview your ass and we're going to have this, and Kat will be back here. No, I'm just kidding.

But you know what I mean?

And it's so rich in my story too.

But you know what?

And what want I to— we all have one.

Here's the thing about humanity. It's not just linear. It's not just youth and age. It's about integrating everything so that we don't have to be separate, so that it melds together in a great knitted fabric of humanity, right?

Yeah.

Well, I think we've done a huge.

Disservice in America by shuttling off everybody over 55 into a retirement community and not have anything for them. They're not part of the societies. They're not. I mean, there was, it used to be your grandparents lived with you and it was hard. It was difficult, but you had that sort of.

They.

Generation.

Didn'T live that long, so they'd be gone.

Holy crap. Well, that's kind of true.

That's what I loved about being in Mexico is like, you know, I'd go to my students' houses and I would sit with, and grandma would be there and grandpa would be there and they would just be in the corner and being silly and. You know, she snuck a beer and it was hilarious. And then she would sing a funny song. I mean, it was, it was in every home. Oh my Lord. That's what, how they lived. And same in India. Same in India.

Yeah. You know, we don't do that and we have lost. I think that is one of our biggest tragedies. I really do.

I agree.

I know our society.

But my mom is never living with me.

Well, your mom.

Your mom, my mom's nuts.

Well, my mom won't because she doesn't want to see me.

She doesn't want to see anybody, Lynn. She doesn't.

I wonder though how we can, you know, in our work, Kat, you know, in our, in your work as a ghostwriter, in our work, how we can start, you know, what kind of healing can we offer? By the way, I think it's hilarious that 55-year-olds seem like punk-ass chumps to me now. Because I'm way beyond that. But I mean, how can we, you know, start bringing healing, but just by who we are and how we're being in our world instead of laying it on the shoulders of them or somebody else out there?

How can we just meet everybody where they are personally and in every intention and way that you can when you are face to face with them? Yeah. And I think.

And I'm not going to say it. Never mind. I wanted to say there's just, from what I'm witnessing, there's just younger people that are a little more acting entitled, give this to me, you know, stuff like that. And I'm like, okay, that was different from mine. But every generation has their shiitake, you know, their shit they throw forward and all of that. So But I've noticed that just a little bit, just even in young people.

Think about our generation. We children should be seen and not heard.

Yeah, it's kind of like that, especially women. Damn, I had all brothers and I was just like fighting like hell to, hello, I'm right here, you know.

Oh, I got locked out of the house.

Oh baby.

Why?

Because my mom didn't want to take care of me and my brother in the summertime. She used to put sandwiches out on the back porch and we'd drink out of the hose and run around the fucking neighborhood like feral children. We're Gen X, baby.

Feral kids on the loose.

Okay.

This has been so great, guys. I wanted to just wrap this up as well for all of us. Thank you so much for being on here. This was a lot of fun and fascinating.

Nobody has ever asked me those questions before.

Ever.

Good.

Really good question. That's a But if this— for everybody out there that's had an opportunity to listen to— if this episode gave you another way to think about ghostwriting in your unique story, hit subscribe right down there. I think it's right there, right there in my finger doing it.

Okay, hit like and subscribe, baby. Like and subscribe. Pay it forward.

That's right.

And if anybody is interested in Kat Uh, email us and we'll, we'll get.

Your— yeah, I'm, I'm— to be a ghost, you have to be a ghost. A ghost. And I don't have an agent anymore because I'm not paying somebody 33% to send me work when I can do it by word of mouth. I'm definitely word of mouth. That's how I work. Well, because as we said, it's so intimate. It's so intimate what I do.

I'm grateful. I'm grateful you're out there doing it, Kat. Really.

I think humanity needs this intimacy a little more, you know, like, oh, real shit. Can you imagine?

Anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, thank you.

All right, bye guys.

Bye.