Case Study: Ghostwriting a Love Story

Back in February 2022, I received an intriguing email from Kevin.  In it, he mentioned that he and his wife, Jola, wanted to write the story of their relationship.

Their two grown-up sons kept badgering them to write it, Kevin said, because theirs was no ordinary courtship.  When they met in the late 1960s, he lived in Essex and Jola in the Polish city of Gdynia.  For years they had had to maintain their relationship across the Iron Curtain, during the Cold War.

(Later, Jola showed me their cherished collection of over 500 hand-written letters!)

Love at first sight 

Theirs was a chance meeting; at a rowdy Dagenham house-party thrown by a friend of Jola’s English pen-pal, whom Jola was visiting in her first-ever trip abroad.

In Kevin’s words: “From the moment I looked at her I felt a shiver; an overwhelming need to be in this lovely woman’s company.  I can’t fully describe that feeling, but it’s still with me even to this day.  It intensifies whenever I look at Jola, even if she’s just reading or talking to someone on the phone.”

These completely mutual sentiments fuelled many years of waiting and longing, against a smouldering backdrop of political tension.  They fuelled those long, long love-letters (some written in pidgin Polish with unintentionally hilarious results), sent back-and-forth across the Iron Curtain.  They fuelled pre-booked telephone calls during which a stranger was always listening in.

There were snatched visits too; taken on sombre trains that rattled ominously past the Berlin Wall.  Every train would be stopped and checked by armed guards and their snarling dogs at regular, random points along the way.  You never knew quite what would happen every time they boarded.  Kevin references the Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks film, Bridge of Spies, whenever he talks about those hair-raising journeys, because to him that film depicts them so well.

Happily ever after

After many years of hope, turmoil, and stress, Kevin and Jola were finally allowed to get married and settle in the UK together, five years after they met.  Their story is filled with incredible ups, downs, twists, and turns: some unexpectedly funny, others desperately sad, and a few utterly terrifying.

The resulting book has taken the three of us just under a year to put together, and it’s one of the warmest and most rewarding projects I have ever worked on.  I’ve learned so much about Polish history, culture, and quirks, and I’ve loved getting to know Kevin and Jola, who are a remarkable couple.

Now that their book is (almost!) complete, Kevin and Jola have kindly written the following case study about working with me.

Proofreading copies of the long-awaited book!

Telling our story

“For many years, our sons pestered us to write about our courtship, which happened across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.  They bought us pens, books, recorders, dictating machines, computer programs, the lot!  But although we tried them all, we never got very far.  We kept running out of steam, and we couldn’t make our story flow in the way we wanted it to.

Years later, one of us was featured in a magazine article after being interviewed about an unrelated topic. This gave us an idea: could someone help us write our book?

After a few searches on the internet, we found Nina.  We contacted her to arrange a meeting in person, as this was such a personal project and we had to make sure it felt right, so to speak.

Nina was, we felt, intrigued and interested in our story right from her first message.  This was confirmed when we met.  At once we were comfortable that we would be happy working together and that she would undertake the task, which was going to be a long project, with empathy.

Working together

First, Nina gave us some very sound advice on how prepare our book.  After meeting in person a few times, we subsequently met via video calls with us recounting our story, or rather stories, as there were so many!  

Nina asked insightful questions along the way to really understand everything we had experienced.  Then she would transcribe them and mould our ramblings into a book.  As we finished each section she advised us to re-read them, as they would most probably trigger other memories, which they did.  

Some of the memories that came up surprised even us, as we had either forgotten them up to that point, or one of us had known something that the other didn’t, and we had never realised!

The End

We spent many fun months working on our book together.   Nina let us proceed at our own pace: always encouraging but never pressurising us, always with an ability to listen and empathise. She took our memories over a significant part of our lives and turned them into an interesting, flowing account that you could actually read.  ‘Nina The Writer’ just sums her up so perfectly.

We finished the process with the book our sons have always wanted.  We never thought it would actually happen.  It never would have without Nina’s professionalism, empathy, skill, and guidance, for which we will be eternally grateful”.

Kevin and Jola Hagger

Time to write your own story? 

If you’ve always wanted to write your life story (or a loved one’s, for that matter), I’m running an online ‘planning tips with Q&A’ session on Wednesday 31^st May, at 6pm BST. 

It costs £5 to join the session.  This is also redeemable against my new online course, How To Write Your Life Story.

Contact me if you have any questions, or would like to book a place.  I’d love to see you there!