r/JUSTNOMIL • u/FransizaurusRex • 1d ago
RANT (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Ambivalent About Advice MiL Ghostwriting Her Autobiography
My MIL is the archetypal boundary-disregarding not-matriarch a lot of this group comes here to commiserate about. So I thought you all might appreciate this recent development.
She’s recently announced that she is going to publish her autobiography. At first, I was baffled — she doesn’t read books, writing has never been a hobby, and she’s dyslexic, so she avoids reading (and learning) like the plague. I was even more confused because she has no career, no track record of accomplishments, and isn’t exactly a deep thinker.
It turns out she’s planning to pay a ghostwriter to do it for her, based on the advice of “no less than 18 psychics” who have told her she has a book to give the world. One of them even referred her to the ghostwriting company. She’s funding this vanity project with money her husband inherited after the death of his mother — which adds a layer of tragic irony to the whole thing (realizing as I’m writing this).
As for the content, it’s a grab bag of disconnected topics she rattled off: a childhood near-death experience, her motherhood journey, her relationship with food, and something called the Violet Flame. When asked how these fit together, she shrugged and said, “That’s the ghostwriter’s job to figure out.” I looked into the Violet Flame and discovered it’s a New Age self-help concept rooted in theosophy — a mishmash of Eastern philosophy, occultism, and Western mysticism from the late 1800s that spread into fringe cult-like spiritual movements in the 20th century. Think crystal healing, Atlantis energy grids, and alien “truths.” So now I know in the course of MIL’s dabbling, she’s picked up some ideas that are pretty far fringe.
Now we have the task of making sure boundaries are respected in print. My spouse wants nothing to do with the book and to be dragged into a narrative where MIL parades her “glorious motherhood” while the reality is years of emotional damage she’s worked to recover from. And under no circumstances is our daughter to appear in it — no names, no details, no photos. Period.
So yeah. That’s on the to-do list this week.
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u/Vast_Helicopter_1914 1d ago
Let your mother-in-law live her delusion. As someone in the freelance writing space, I can tell you that she's in for a real shock when she finds out how hard it is to find a quality ghostwriter and get published.
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u/wrincewind 1d ago
Oh, she's already been referred to a "quality" ghostwriter. My bet is that this is all one big scam - the "psychic" picks out vulnerable people, refers them to a ghost-writer, who sucks all of mil's money down and may or may not produce anything for it.
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u/FransizaurusRex 1d ago
Can you say more? This is the most comforting thing I have heard.
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u/Vast_Helicopter_1914 1d ago
A worthwhile ghostwriter is going to cost a lot of money. Someone who's willing to write for cheap is not going to do a good job. If your mother-in-law has nothing to really say about her life, as you claim, no publisher is going to want to pick up her book.
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u/FransizaurusRex 7h ago
Is $15-20k anywhere near market for a quality ghostwriter? Asking for friend lol
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u/dachsie-knitter-22 1d ago
Reach out to the Ghostwriter when you get their name from MIL. Make clear you will sue them if any names you do not want appear in this book.
MIL will probably LIVE to tell you about her wonderful relationship with ghostwriter.
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u/The_One_True_Imp 1d ago
Honestly, it sounds like a scam. Your MIL is far more likely to lose thousands to this company than to have a book at the end of things
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u/nutraxfornerves 1d ago
Good chance that the psychic gets kickbacks from the ghostwriter for referrals. So, the psychic “just happens” to have an awful lot of clients who have a book in them and only need a little bit of help getting it written.
And these kinds of psychics are experts at reading clients. The other 17 could easily have picked up that MIL thinks her background is fascinating and said what she wanted to hear—that the psychic sees in her aura that she should tell her story to the world.
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u/farsighted451 1d ago
Hire a lawyer for one hour to write a letter to her and the ghostwriting company.
She's not going to respect it otherwise.
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u/FransizaurusRex 7h ago
Le sigh. I think this is a last resort. FiL is an attorney and I’d rather not get in a legal pissing match.
MiL’s brother is a celebrity of sorts. I think the better move would be to tip off his publicist and let him kill it.
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u/Melody4 1d ago
Maybe this isn't such a bad thing. Her "journey" and "work" will keep her busy from now until she has to pay amazon to self-publish a book that "sells" maybe three copies. One might even be a holiday gift for you! Yeah! One can never have too much spare toilet paper.
She'll be out of your hair for a while. On the flip side just from the way you wrote this post, YOU should consider becoming a professional writer!
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u/FransizaurusRex 1d ago
Le sigh. The problem is the potential (read: likely) invasions of privacy and boundary crossing. We are a country who can no longer tolerate military incursions into its borders.
Thanks for the compliment! I’ve had a few things published, but it’s been years.
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u/WriterMomAngela 1d ago
Is she planning to self-publish it? Shop it around to publishers to publish it for her? If it’s the former you have the grace of no one is going to buy it. The latter, a publisher will definitely not be interested in buying it. Paying a ghostwriter does not equal publishing success it just means she will have a finished draft in hand not a best seller.
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u/Bubbly-Champion-6278 1d ago
I was going to say she could get AI to write for her and then self publish it and save herself a load of money lol. It would still need to be proofread though...
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u/HenryBellendry 1d ago
I hope you realize you’re about to receive a copy for your next birthday or Christmas gift when it sells all of maybe one or two copies.
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u/BellaSquared 1d ago
18 psychics, huh? 🤭 I wonder if it's a lucrative scam for the psychic and ghost writer? I suspect it'll be too much effort on her part and she'll get bored with it. Be strong!
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u/Tasty-Mall8577 1d ago
Would spending her inheritance on something 18 psychics told her to do count as mental decline? Perhaps you could hint that people may think she’s going downhill if she carries on - you might swerve her onto another project (drawback, that project might be you!!).
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u/Embercream 23h ago
Psychic: Write your autobiography
MIL: I don't know how to words?
Psychic: Hire a ghostwriter to solve your woes
MIL: Can you recommend one?
Psychic: My cousin
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u/Beneficial-Weird-100 1d ago
Pray that will keep her busy and leave you alone in the process. Heck, give her chapter ideas, keep her talking to the ghostwriter, lol.
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u/Hot-Freedom-5886 1d ago
“This week?” Sounds likely that it’s going to have to be on the list for every week.
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u/Open-Kaleidoscope721 1d ago
Uhmmm.. I actually laughed out loud.
Also, who goes to see 18 psychics.
Good luck, ghostwriter person.
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u/No-Interaction-8913 1d ago
Psychic #18 to MIL: you’ve been told this 17 times? Yes absolutely!
Psychic #18 to their wordy sister: so you’re going to get a phone call about writing a book. Go with it.
I had a similar former friend, no psychics but felt her story needed to be told as an example to young women about true love etc… it was about her creepy then 30 year old husband grooming her as a teen. Myself and 2 other friends also said we wanted absolutely no mentions, not even with changed names, absolutely nothing. That’s a completely fair boundary! Hold it up! I bet it also squashes the whole thing . But it’ll keep her busy and out of your hair for awhile at least 🤷♀️
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u/MsMerete 1d ago
Does she have the money to pay a ghost writer? Because I cantimagine that would be cheap, especially if there's no way they're making money on the sales of a book about a nobody who's done nothing of interest
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u/FransizaurusRex 1d ago
Yup. The “money is finally there” because of the passing of my father in law’s mother. My MiL financing her vanity project from her MiL’s money is deeply tragic.
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u/MsMerete 1d ago
Deeply tragic and based on what you've written, not at all surprising.
Assuming she follows through with it, someone who takes the money to write her story will be of dubious talents. Purple prose for the Violet Flame.
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u/Stock-Mountain-6063 1d ago
Sadly there's enough stupid people out there that somebody's going to buy that damn book
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