Chapter 27: The Book

Susan Ellen is writing a book.

I don’t think she knows how to read.

But, goshdarnit, that’s not going to keep her from writing the great American novel.

Or, the great American self-help-weight-loss-lifestyle book.

I told Susan Ellen I was trying to be a comedy writer and I suppose she thought that meant I wanted to be a ghostwriter for books on how to lose weight and make detox drinks out of olive oil, rubber cement, and paper clips.

She asked if I was interested in ghostwriting her book while I was working out of her house. I gladly accepted. I would rather do that than do her online shopping for jewel-studded enemas. Also, having the experience of ghostwriting a self-help book would be a hilarious anecdote to include in my E! True Hollywood Story.

She told me her book was a “how-to-book.”

I asked her, “How to do what?”

“Make a change,” she answered.

“What kinds of changes?”

“Changes in your life: how to be happy, how to lose weight, how to get rid of calluses on your feet, how to become more spiritual. Stuff like that.”

She told me she wrote everything; she just needs to organize her information.

Okay, I can do that. I know nothing about losing weight, foot calluses, or happiness, but I know about organization. I think.

She gave me a CD filled with documents that were her notes. I scrolled through them and realized she copy-pasted information from websites such as the Hydroxycut website.

She gave me a folder filled with her “notes.” They were pages ripped out of Prevention magazine and wrappers from her diet bars and fortunes from fortune cookies that somehow resembled Buddhist quotes.

It was like she gave me a pile of Lincoln logs, twigs, and a fake plant and asked me to organize those things into a book.