TWIC: Native Americans, plot twist, ghost blog-writing, write what you don't know,

I try to keep track of expired copyright media that appears online that is available for reproduction and alteration.  Openmedia reports that Edward Curtis' photos of native Americans from the early 1900s are available. They link to the Library of Congress's archives.

Curtis's images aren't 'authentic'.  He was comfortable adjusting or adding clothing or making other changes to fit what he wanted rather than what was simply correct.

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The biggest plot twist in his life.

I discovered I wanted to be a writer.
Ridiculous!
The only things I’d published in my life were entries on a couple of game forums. I had zero experience in writing for a wider audience. I had no relevant training (other than obligatory courses in high school 14 years prior).
I also had a family to support and a solid IT career, so I couldn't just quit everything and immerse in my newfound passion.
It took me more than a month to write my first blog post after that discovery. It took another few months before I started to write regularly.
Eight months after reading The Slight Edge and 6.5 months after discovering I wanted to write, I published my first non-fiction book on Amazon.

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Pee Zed Myers, at Pharyngula Blog received an unsolicited offer of a job ghost writing. He turned it down, or didn't reply but not merely because he already has a job. The pay is "$600 per 160,000 words which are free of grammatical errors". Jesus.  As a Nanowrimo writer, I felt challenged to write 50,000 words, with sentences full of errors, in a month. $200 a month really isn't what I need.  Unless the American dollar has really climbed in value recently?

A quick Googling showed me the first result for ghost writers with pay around $1/100 words.
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Audio interview with author William Trevor. The MP3 is there but there is also at least a partial transcript

ON WRITING WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW
I've always rejected the dictum that young writers are, I think, most falsely told: that they should write about what they know. I think that is nonsense. I think young writers should write about what they don't know, and try it and see. If you can make something of what you don't know, then you can go on afterwards to combine what you don't know with what you know well. Writing's a much messier business than people imagine it is. You've got to create raw material in the first place, and out of the raw material you've got to cut your way into a short story or a novel, leaving huge swathes of it absolutely unused.

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