Chaitanya Srishti Sinha Indian Writers - Ghost-Writing & Aspiring to be a Writer
Introduction
Srishti started as a ghost-writer and has written many books, even if they do not carry her name. She is also an aspiring fiction writer.
Read Srishti's Works
(01) Here, you can read a small piece she had written about Kamala Harris, when she became the vice-president of USA.
(02) You can read some of her poems.
(03) You can also check some of her articles on Women's Web (opens in a new window)
(04) Finally, below, you can also read a brief email interview with Srishti conducted in Dec. 2024.
An Interview with Chaitanya Srishti Sinha
Q: Share some general background about you including the kind of books you like reading, the kind of music you like, your early influences, your early dreams about the kind of person you wanted to be?
Srishti: I grew up in a middle-class family with middle-class values. The time spent in the small town of Belpahar in Odisha forms my core memory, and that peaceful little TATA town in the heart of a forest (although now Jharsuguda district is a major industrial hub) is still a part of me.
In my childhood and adolescent years, I enjoyed reading Premchand. One reason could be my father who introduced me to Mantra and Idgah when I was five. The story of Anne Frank had a deep impact on me when I was around ten. Ruskin Bond and Rabindranath Tagore were my favorites too.
My favorite authors include Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai, Ocean Vuong, Min Jin Lee, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith, and Damon Galgut. I keep going back to the writings of James Baldwin when looking for inspiration.
I was selected for state-level ICSE story writing competition in Odisha 
when I was 13
but never told my parents because I was too shy to participate. In ICSE and ISC boards,
we have a compulsory essay section in language papers, and I always chose story writing.
Students were generally discouraged from going for them. However, I liked the challenge
and was lucky enough to fetch decent marks in them.
When I was 16, I was made the literary captain of my school in Varanasi. I think that was probably because I wrote a lot of stories, both in Hindi and English, for the school magazine.
Cable TV at home exposed me to diverse content. It ranged from films by Karan Johar to Gurinder Chadha, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Vishal Bharadwaj, and even Rob Reiner, Jafar Panahi, and Hayao Miyakazi. Back then I didn’t even know the names of most directors and storywriters but now when I think about it, for a visual thinker like me, I feel blessed to have lived that experience. Films also helped me learn how stories were told and how each frame was studied.
When it came to music, I enjoyed all the mix of Indian music. Anything from Hindustani Classical to Bollywood can have my interest. I have not listened to a lot of Western music, and I still don’t. My father used to bring home cassettes of Iqbal Bano, Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali, and Farida Khanum, so that happens to be my comfort zone when it comes to ghazals. If I need to relax, I depend on nature sounds now. It calms me down instantly, clears my head, and helps me write better. I am sure it has to do with the place where I grew up.
Q: This unusual profession of being a ghostwriter, how has it changed you both in positive and not-so-positive ways, what lessons have you learned, and where do you see yourself going in another 5 or 10 years?
Srishti: I agree, this profession is very unusual and most of my relatives had not even heard of it. I, myself, had no clue about anything called ghostwriting. Interestingly, I recently found out that one of my uncles (he is no more) used to ghostwrite a weekly newspaper column about a policeman’s encounters and investigations in 1960s Allahabad. He did it for fun and never got credited or paid for it. The series was later compiled into a book.
I am, too, not credited for my time, worth, talent, energy, research, or honesty. I never Google the books I write because it’s like being in a toxic relationship with your ex. But I do love it when I have repeat clients. The fact that people want to work with me again makes me happy.
I don’t really see my work as unconventional because ghostwriting is more common than most people know. Most autobiographies are ghostwritten.
I keep getting orders so I am actively ghostwriting as of now. However, I have started working on my two fiction books and I intend to publish them in the next ten years (the thought gives me jitters).
Q: How did this professional path come to you, how did it grow, how did you decide what kind of things you wanted to do and which things you won't do
Srishti: During college, I worked with Campus Diaries and My Movies Rack and helped the former build story content and reviewed and rated movies for the latter. This was also when I used to work with CSDS on post-poll and other kinds of surveys in and around New Delhi. Fieldwork helped me better understand the intersections of caste, region, religion, and social and economic status. After college, I closely worked with Women’s Web for several years and wrote articles on women’s issues. The global readership of these articles varied anywhere from 7,000 to 25,000. That gave my writing quite a bit of exposure but I wanted to try something different. In 2022, I came across an advertisement by the platform that I currently work with. It’s a Canadian company and they work with and for people from everywhere. They were hiring ghostwriters through a series of tests. I took the tests for fun and got selected.
The pay was better than what writers are paid in India. I have ghostwritten 24 books. Initially, I was a little skeptical about writing books on real estate, finance, religion, and technology because those were not my areas of expertise, and I adhered to subjects on women, interrelationships, parenting, health, diet, lifestyle, humor, self-help, politics, economy, and diseases and disorders. Now, I take up all the orders that come my way. I am proud of the fact that I can dissociate personal preferences and beliefs from my profession.
I do interact with my clients before I sign the contract. I have the liberty to work at my pace and schedule my orders. When I began in 2022, I used to take up an insane amount of work every month (beginner’s enthusiasm) and the burnout was real in 2023. I have taken things more slowly in 2024.
Q: What are the challenges and satisfactions of your work, how do your friends react when they find out about your work, how does the family react, do they understand?
Srishti: Currently, this “job” of mine gives me mental security and peace, and a sense of stability where I can do what I like from the comfort of my home, and also manage other personal responsibilities. There will always be people who want their names on the cover-page and ghostwriters like me make that possible for them.
I love that I get to work with people from different parts of the world. I have worked with competent editors who taught me about book writing and formatting. I have had my share of tough clients as well, very demanding and rude, but the overall experience has been good and I get to read a lot. For example, I had to refer to the Torah for a few segments of a book I wrote this year and that was a great learning experience.
Most of my friends know that I am working on my fiction books and ghostwriting is temporary. It’s not just about me. A lot of us feel stuck in such situations where we want to change careers or feel lost when unable to follow our passion. Thankfully, I never felt that because this was a choice I made. I have the privilege of simultaneously working on my passion project. Covid made me realize I was not cut out for a 9 to 5 job and writing makes me happy. My parents, family, and friends, have always been extremely supportive. In fact, it was my friends who pushed me to work on my books and balance that with ghostwriting. In all honesty, writing books is an exhausting job, especially when one does it all year. This year, I learned to set my priorities right and not make my life all about my work, something we all need to do, no matter which profession we are in.
I have not written any biographies or autobiographies yet. I had one offer once but I felt it would be difficult to work with that client, so I politely declined.