Ghostwriting Assignment

For my business writing class, we were given the assignment of ghostwriting a letter of complaint to Starbucks on behalf of a significant other - spouse, parent, etc. The challenge is to write in their voice, not in ours.

I've ghostwritten articles, speeches, and letters many times throughout the years, so this is not new to me. However, it's still a great exercise, especially since I'm writing on behalf of my mother-in-law, who has an actual complaint against Starbucks.

But it leads me to a significant question - do I write the letter in her actual voice? Or do I write it in the full knowledge that she would have brought me the letter first, and I would have changed it to make it sound more professional?

In the working world, when we ghostwrite for someone we do it because we write well, sometimes even better than our principal. The principal (the person we're writing for) wants his/her voice, only better. So how authentic can you be when you know that the authentic style is incorrect?

I also find it difficult for our teacher to grade such an assignment, because she has no way of knowing if we are doing it correctly. I asked this question, and she responded that we would know if it's correct or not. But I think that's giving us too much benefit of the doubt - if you've never ghostwritten before, it would be difficult to know if you're doing it correctly or not.

If I were giving this assignment, I would have asked us to all write a letter on behalf of the same famous person - George Bush, a newscaster, someone people have heard speak before. Then we could compare the letters to one another and recognize which were effective and which were not.

But it's still a great exercise, and I'm enjoying writing the letter with my mother-in-law's complaining voice in my head. My husband is amused as well.