Portrait of a Ghostwriting Editor

"As soon as I could go 'Mamagagayaya,' I was learning Spanish, German and English all at once, a whirlwind of romantic words and phrases, gestures and actions, all painting the emotions of the often-mysterious human palette," says author, ghostwriter, and editor, William "Dino" Garner of his early writing career.

Prose. had the recent pleasure of speaking with Garner to find out more about what's involved in negotiating multiple creative roles.

He says that his mother was his first editor.

"She was dogmatic about speaking properly, in Spanish and English. At the other end of the kitchen, my adopted German family was equally diligent in teaching me proper high German, not the slurry variety of the southern region. So my formative years were filled with de rigueur images and sounds, tastes and scents of all color and stripe, all conspiring to mold me into a little prince of distinguished letters."

This "cross-cultural formality" is what made him want to explore more “undignified” (read: vibrant and colorful) forms of language. He spent time observing the behavior spoken by "the beggar on a corner, gangsta in a traphouse, and hundreds of other real-life characters who forced the evolution of the English language," he said.

"During a brief intermission back in the U.S., I entered Kindergarten in the good State of Georgia, and promptly started editing my teacher’s backwater grammar."

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Stay tuned for the complete article today on The Official Prose Blog at: blog.theprose.com/blog.