What Building 100 Model Kits Taught Me About Ghostwriting

People ask how I’ve written 113 books under my name and well over 50 for clients without losing my mind.

I tell them about the boat.

The USS Constitution. “Old Ironsides.” A wooden ship model with over a thousand pieces. Rigging that required tweezers and a magnifying glass. The box showed this gorgeous three-masted warship, every cannon in place, every line of rigging perfect. The kind of thing you’d see in a maritime museum behind glass.

I bought it because it looked like a challenge. I’m the kind of person who sees “difficult” as an invitation. Same reason I became a ghostwriter. Somebody else’s story, their voice, their life, assembled into something coherent? Difficult. Interesting. Worth doing.

Three weeks in, I had a half-finished hull taking up my entire dining room table. Sawdust everywhere. Tiny wooden planks scattered across the floor where I’d knocked them off reaching for the glue. The smell of wood stain had embedded itself in my curtains. And I was on my hands and knees with a flashlight, searching for a piece smaller than my thumbnail that had pinged off into the void.

“Son of a…”

That became my mantra. Every night. Son of a… this plank doesn’t fit. Son of a… I glued the wrong piece. Son of a… I have to rip this apart again.

I’d gotten impatient. The instructions said to let the hull cure for 24 hours before adding the deck planking. I gave it six. Close enough, right?

Wrong.

The hull warped. Not much. Just enough that nothing lined up anymore. Every piece after that was slightly off. I compensated. Forced things. Told myself it would work out.

It didn’t.

By the end of week four, I was standing in my living room in the small hours, holding a crooked, gap-riddled disaster that looked nothing like the picture on the box. I’d skipped steps. Jumped ahead because I was excited. Ignored the structure because I thought I knew better.

Old Ironsides had defeated the British navy. She couldn’t survive me.

I didn’t throw it in the trash.

I threw it at the wall.

The hull exploded. Tiny wooden planks everywhere. A mast embedded itself in the drywall. Three weeks of work reduced to kindling in one satisfying moment of rage.

Then I stood there in the silence, breathing hard, sawdust settling around me like snow.

I went to bed. The next morning, I swept up the pieces and bought a 1/32 scale tank.

That tank taught me how to write books.

One Piece at a Time

Plastic, not wood. Maybe 200 pieces instead of a thousand. Instructions that made sense. A project I could finish in a weekend, not a month.

And I followed the steps this time. Every single one. No skipping ahead. No “close enough.” No forcing pieces that didn’t want to fit.

The turret didn’t go on until the chassis was done. The tracks didn’t go on until the wheels were set. I let glue cure. I test-fitted before committing. I built the damn thing in order.

When I finished, it looked like the picture on the box. Clean. Tight. Professional.

That tank sits on my shelf today. The Constitution is probably still in my drywall somewhere.

Model building has rules. You don’t glue the turret before the chassis is done. You don’t paint before you’ve test-fitted the parts. You don’t skip steps because you’re excited to see the finished product.

Every experienced modeler learns this the hard way. Rush ahead, something doesn’t fit, and now you’re prying apart pieces you already glued. Trying to fix a mistake that wouldn’t have happened if you’d just followed the sequence.

Ghostwriting works the same way.

When a client comes to me with their life story, I don’t start writing chapter one on day one. That’s the Constitution mistake. Jumping into the build before you understand the scope.

I interview first. Listen. Take notes. Figure out where the story actually starts, which isn’t always where the client thinks it starts. Identify the scenes that matter and the ones that feel important but don’t carry weight.

Then I outline. Then I draft. Then I revise.

One piece at a time. In the right order. No wild tangents.

The Client Who Wanted to Skip Ahead

I had a client once who wanted to start with his business philosophy. Fifteen pages of lessons learned and wisdom gained. He’d written it all out already, proud of every word.

“This is the foundation,” he said. “Everything else builds on this.”

I read it. Dense. Abstract. The kind of thing that sounds profound when you’re writing it after midnight but puts readers to sleep by paragraph three.

“Where’s the story?” I asked.

“What do you mean? This is the story. My philosophy.”

“No. This is the conclusion. Where’s the scene where you learned this? Where’s the moment it became real?”

Silence.

He didn’t have it. He’d skipped ahead to the wisdom without building the foundation that made the wisdom matter. Glued the turret on before the chassis was ready.

We went back. Interviewed. Found the scene: him sitting in a parking lot after getting fired, mid-afternoon, staring at his steering wheel. Realizing everything he’d believed about success was wrong.

That scene went in chapter one. The philosophy came later, after readers had a reason to care.

One piece at a time. In the right order. No wild tangents.

The Instruction Sheet Is a Suggestion (Until It Isn’t)

Experienced modelers know when to deviate from the instructions. Aftermarket parts. Different paint schemes. Small modifications that make the build yours.

But you have to know the rules before you break them.

New modelers who skip steps or improvise too early end up with gaps, misaligned parts, and builds that look wrong even if they can’t explain why. I know because I’ve got a garbage bag full of early mistakes to prove it.

Same with memoir. Clients sometimes want to start with their ancestry. Or a lengthy description of the historical context of their childhood. Or the “setup” they think readers need before the story begins.

That’s improvising before you’ve mastered the basics. The story has to work as a story first. Structure comes before style. You earn the right to break the rules by proving you understand them.

When I interview clients, I’m listening for the structure underneath the chaos. The moments that matter. The turning points. The scenes that will anchor each chapter. Once we have that skeleton, we can add flourishes. But the skeleton comes first.

The Right Scale for the Space

The Constitution was a 1/96 scale model. Beautiful. Ambitious. Completely wrong for my situation.

I didn’t have the space for it. Didn’t have the patience for rigging that would take longer than the rest of the build combined. I’d picked a project that didn’t fit my constraints. No amount of stubbornness was going to fix that.

The tank was 1/32. Smaller box. Fewer parts. Something I could finish on a Saturday afternoon and actually display somewhere without rearranging my entire apartment.

Knowing your constraints isn’t failure. It’s wisdom.

Some clients come to me wanting to write a 400-page epic covering every moment of their lives from birth to present day. Every job. Every relationship. Every vacation. Every lesson learned.

That’s the Constitution.

The better book is usually tighter. The five years that changed everything. The one relationship that shaped who you became. The single project that defined your career.

I had a client who wanted to cover his entire 40-year career in finance. Every deal. Every merger. Every market crash he’d navigated.

“That’s not a memoir,” I told him. “That’s an encyclopedia.”

We narrowed it down to three years. The years when everything almost fell apart. When his marriage, his business, and his health all hit crisis points at the same time.

That’s a book. That’s a story with stakes. That’s the right scale for the space.

Scope matters. A focused story that actually gets finished beats an ambitious one that sits half-done on your dining room table until you throw it at a wall.

Proof It Works

I didn’t just figure this out from client work. I lived it.

My Life in Crazytown is my own memoir. Nineteen years in a dysfunctional family where the rules changed without warning. The hypervigilance that trauma created. The systematic thinking I developed to survive. How my AuDHD brain got wired in those chaotic years, and how all of it became my edge later in life.

I could have written a bloated therapy session covering sixty-five years. Every job. Every relationship. Every decade since leaving home.

That would have been the Constitution.

I found the structure instead. The childhood and teenage years that shaped everything. The scenes that mattered. The throughline connecting a chaotic upbringing to the person I became.

The worst things that happened to me became the best things about me. I didn’t see that until I wrote it down. Didn’t see the pattern until I forced myself to put the story on paper.

That’s the model builder’s approach. One piece at a time. Right scale for the space. No wild tangents.

Your Story Has a Structure

You might not see it yet. That’s normal.

When you’re living your life, it feels like random chaos. One thing after another with no pattern. You can’t see the shape because you’re inside it.

But there’s a structure underneath. Turning points. Themes. Moments that echo across decades. The thing that happened when you were seventeen that explains the decision you made at forty.

Finding that structure is the work. Like model building, it goes faster when you follow a process instead of improvising your way into a wall.

Start Building

If you’re not ready for the full bundle, the AI-Enhanced Writing Starter Kit is free. Three guides to help you find your story’s shape and start putting the pieces together.

The tank’s still on my shelf. Clean lines. Proper structure. Built one piece at a time.

Some projects teach you what not to do. Others teach you how to finish.

Your story deserves to be finished.

FAQ

How does model building relate to ghostwriting?

Both require following a sequence. You don’t glue the turret before the chassis is done. You don’t write chapter one before you understand where the story actually starts. Skipping steps leads to gaps and misaligned parts, whether you’re building a tank or building a book.

What’s the most common mistake memoir writers make?

Starting with conclusions instead of scenes. Clients often want to open with their philosophy or lessons learned. That’s the ending, not the beginning. Readers need to see the moment something became real before they’ll care about the wisdom you extracted from it.

How do I know if my memoir scope is too big?

If you’re trying to cover your entire life from birth to present day, that’s too big. The better book focuses on the five years that changed everything, the one relationship that shaped who you became, or the single project that defined your career. Constraints aren’t failure. They’re wisdom.

What if I can’t see the structure in my own story?

That’s normal. When you’re living your life, it feels like random chaos. You can’t see the shape because you’re inside it. But there’s a structure underneath: turning points, themes, moments that echo across decades. Finding that structure is the work.

Do I need to be a professional writer to write a memoir?

No. You need a story worth telling and a process to follow. Like model building, memoir goes faster when you follow a sequence instead of improvising your way into a wall. The skills can be learned. The story is already yours.