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Q+A with Margie Thomson, writer of Straight Up by Ruby Tui, the 2022 bestseller.

As the ghostwriter of books by Ruby Tui, Stan Walker, John Kirwan and many others, do these books of yours fall somewhere between journalism and PR? What space do you think you are taking up?

I would say that ghostwriting is somewhat like many things, but not quite like anything else. This is his own territory.

The very existence of these books can be seen as a kind of PR exercise – that they exist to promote a certain personality, to shape public perception in order to enhance a personal brand. All I can say in response to this is that the people I’ve written about have real stories to tell—stories that readers care about and that add value to people’s lives and fill our awareness of the world, in which we live. If books are armchair tourism, then this memoir takes us into the lives of people who perhaps can’t/don’t have the time to write their own story. So, quite legitimately, they hire someone else to write it for them while they get busy doing the thing we all love them for.

On the PR question, the people I write about do not frame the questions I ask or the direction I might take in our conversations together. Although every book I write about someone is the story of their life, it would certainly be a very different book if someone else had written it—not better or worse, just different. Different things would have been accentuated and toned down, different aspects of their personality and history might have been emphasized or removed (of course this is true of journalism, or certainly feature journalism as well).

But neither books really resemble journalism. Journalism usually uses the third person or, if it is in the first person, it is the journalist’s own self that we are engaged with. In these books, I write in the first person, but I am channeling someone else. Which, when you think about it, is pretty weird.

Sometimes I think ghostwriting is like translation: how to take meaning from one language and make it into something meaningful in another language, when we all know that languages ​​don’t have to equate exactly to each other in pure word-for-word matches word, or in the world view? In this sense, I am talking about the translation between spoken language and written language. Creativity is required, although this is not necessarily obvious to the average reader. Or maybe it’s like acting, where you take on a different person’s voice and character; where you channel another person through yourself. I don’t want to sound grandiose about it. I’m just trying to explain what it’s like when you write with someone else’s first person pronoun.

I believe that what makes these types of books significant is the honesty and self-reflexivity of the subjects—qualities that go beyond public relations or journalism.

None of the people I’ve worked with have ever tried to cover things up or cover up flaws, except out of respect for someone else. In fact, of the people I’ve written for/about, almost all have been amazingly willing to go deep and explore things about themselves that are difficult, unflattering, even sometimes not very nice.

Stripping naked, Stan and Ruby call people to their stories

This was brought home in something that John Kirwan expressed to me. We worked together on his All blacks don’t cry in 2010. All blacks don’t cry continues to be a landmark book on mental health (an updated edition will be published next year), and it’s easy to forget—now that we’re talking relatively openly about mental illness—what a risk JK took when he went public about his struggle with depression. In the years that followed, he had thousands of encounters with others who wanted to share their own stories and struggles with him. Here’s what he said: He made himself vulnerable in this book, and that gave people an opportunity to immediately be vulnerable.

I think that’s the bottom line with all these books – the subjects are so honest and speak so generously about their struggles and successes that readers feel enriched and connected. They feel a sense of shared experience. Maybe they feel they are not the only ones.

The same principle worked with my last two books, the Stan Walker one Impossible and that of Ruby Tui Straight forward. Both Stan and Ruby put their all into the project. Both of their careers exemplify effort and hard work—what Ruby would call “gratitude,” that is, demonstrating through their actions their gratitude for the opportunities presented. Stripping naked, they call people to their stories.

Did you get close to Stan and Ruby? Stan told you some really intense things about his childhood, including sexual abuse. Ruby also shared many personal stories from a rather difficult childhood.

The ghostwriter/subject relationship is different from regular journalist/subject relationships, which are more obviously transactional and short—life in an hour, that sort of thing. Ghostwriting is much more intense and personal. We’ve been together a lot longer and I’m aware of walking right into someone’s life and questioning a lot of them in terms of details, reliving past events and so on. It is a curious combination of a highly personal and highly professional and respectful attitude.

That is, the relationship is really important. It’s not friendship—it’s too one-way for that—but it’s a kind of love on my part. It has to be because I will be living in their lives for months.

No doubt it’s an unusual setup – for someone to tell a complete stranger all this personal stuff – but then again, we do this with consultants. And it makes me think that some of the ghostwriting is indeed more aligned with consulting (consultants may disagree). It’s my job to listen and ask, and it’s not my job to judge, although it is my job to empathize. What I am saying is that the work is as much about listening and empathizing as it is about writing.

Do you see them as tasks or do they develop into something much more personal?

They start out as tasks, of course. The publisher calls and asks if I’m interested and may or may not have heard of the subject before. I do a little background and then we meet to see if we like each other and feel like we can work together – and it’s one of those curious things about people that you can feel right away if there’s a connection. And then we find time to meet and start. So in a way it’s simple and transactional, but how can you stay in that mode when someone is telling you things that maybe they’ve never talked about before? It is impossible. It definitely gets personal, at least for me. And really, right from the start you know it’s going to get personal because it has to.

Are there challenges in working with people who are… very different from yourself?

I’m thinking here of Doug Avery, the “sustainable farmer.” When Penguin Random first suggested to him that I might be a good person to help him write his book, he Googled me and nearly collapsed when he saw that I was active in the Green Party. In turn, I quickly learned that he was passionately committed to the National Party. Green, blue. Urban, rural. By some criteria, we shouldn’t have liked each other. And yet we really did. He is one of the most emotionally open people I have ever met and puts his whole heart into caring for his farming community. At his book launch, men after hardy men stood up and told of moments of emotional and psychological hardship when Doug tirelessly and wisely supported them. That’s the privilege of a ghostwriter—to see these people up close, beyond all the surface stuff and into the heart.

Ruby would have liked to have a Pasifika co-writer, but none were available… I could only be me – a middle-aged palagi – and I just did my best to listen, learn and reflect

In the case of Ruby Tui, I knew about her team and had been fascinated by its culture for some time, although I had missed the moment that catapulted her into the public eye when she gave an entertaining interview to the BBC after one of the Black Ferns Sevens games at the Olympics games in tokyo. But I did “profile” Portia Woodman—in that Life in an Hour way I mentioned above—for my 2019 book. A woman and was mesmerized by the magic of these players and their joyous energy. So when Jenny Helen from Allen & Unwin called, I was excited at the chance to gain a deeper understanding and as soon as I met Ruby, I knew she would be a dream subject.

Everyone can immediately sense Ruby’s honesty and commitment and these really are the key qualities for this kind of book, with the general awesomeness, decency and sense of humor being the icing on the cake. Ruby would have loved to have a Pasifika co-writer, but there wasn’t one. If she had, no doubt her book would have been different, with a different emphasis and better insight into some aspects of her life. This phantom ‘other’ writer sat beside me for a while while I was working with Ruby, but in the end I could only be me – a middle-aged palaga – and I just did my best to listen and learn and reflect.

It was the same with Stan Walker – I knew who he was even though I hadn’t paid much attention, but as soon as I met him I just felt very comfortable. Yes, he is half my age, he is Maori while I am Pakeha and his life story is different from mine. Not to mention it’s way cooler. So it’s an interesting question, isn’t it, about what can make us feel connected to each other.

I’m not discounting the importance of these markers of identity—ethnicity, wealth, class background, gender—because they really define so much of our life experience. But I also believe that we are more than our demographic labels. Thank God, because otherwise there would be no hope for us. We are all indigenous to this planet. That is, there are human qualities that we all share and can relate to. So maybe it’s about being interested, respectful, and caring—and if you can be those things, you can develop that warm sense of connection with people who on the surface seem very different. I just keep trying to decenter myself and remember that mine is not the only view in the room.

How often do you meet for interviews?

Stan and I did most of our interviews at my house, in my little office. I would make him food and coffee and he would carry shopping bags full of crackers and those little pretzels and salads from the deli across the street. The interview tapes are full of gags. And he would often stay for hours on end – four hours, six hours – that’s a loud and exhausting amount of talking. He was often away and living his busy life, so these marathon sessions were the only way I could buy the time.

Ruby and I “met” via zoom during the second lockout and continued that way. We did more than 40 hours of zooming over maybe twenty sessions as well as sending emails and WhatsApp messages. Before the lockdown ended in Auckland she was able to come home to Tauranga and since then her life has been crazy busy – I was so lucky to have that short window where she was available. During our ‘get-togethers’, her partner Danny might drop by or bring Ruby a coffee or snack; my dog ​​was on the field the entire game (that is, on the carpet at my feet) and even got credit in the book. We didn’t meet physically until the World Cup semi-final – that incredibly narrow, heart-pounding victory – when I got to hug her after the match and what I thought was: man, she’s so muscular!

Our interview confirms what I suspected: to be a good ghost, you have to be a good person. Do you have ongoing friendships with the people you write about?

Not really – not in the sense of doing things together or even being in regular contact. But we stay warm to each other and if I ever saw them I would definitely give them a big hug and we would catch up.

Straight forward by Ruby Tui as Told to Margie Thomson (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) is selling out quickly in bookstores nationwide.