Education

We need to normalize having a conscience.

I meet "editors" who don't know when it's appropriate to use em- vs en-dash.

I meet "typesetters" who can't tell you kerning from leading, or their verso from their recto. (Couldn't resist the pun. Forgive me. ??)

I meet "ghostwriters" who have never heard the term "head hopping." How can you have ghostwritten anything, worked with any editor of reasonable competence, and never, not once, encountered those words strung together?

And these people are claiming to have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. ?????? They are claiming to have served tens, sometimes hundreds, of clients. These people make regular appeals to "community."

Information is free. It's not difficult to educate yourself. You can get almost all the information about your vocation for no more than time and attention.

I've been in the industry for over a decade. I have had the experience of being awed by an influencer's marketing, her frequent posts, and her claims at expertise. Her books on Amazon.

I accepted unsolicited advice from her when I was green.

If I confront this lady, she'll say I should have known better than to take free advice from a stranger. (And LinkedIn will likely ban me for "harassment.")

They always have some excuse for it. For not having a conscience. For victim blaming.

Now that I am able to afford to purchase my own time, I've downloaded her publicly available lead magnet and though she claims to be a "Bestselling Nonfiction Book Ghostwriter" she doesn't know the lines on the left page and the right page are supposed to be aligned. She doesn't know about pagination or folios. She doesn't know subheadings are supposed to be set in Title Case. The "book" is rife with serial comma, capitalization, and quote mark inconsistency. She doesn't know why it's less fatiguing to the eye for people to read justified text, so her poorly written eBook has ragged margins.

These aren't errors, these aren't oversights. These are the telltale signs of someone completely in the dark about fundamental elements of her claimed area of expertise. This woman sells courses now. "Training" other people to be ghostwriters. Still luring people into her funnel with her books on Amazon.

Or maybe she knows these things and doesn't care. Can you tell which is worse? Will you let me know?

We need to normalize having a conscience.

Not to do the thing because of potential, imagined, praise. Not for recognition, or for kind words said by people who like us. Not for clout or co-signs. Not motivated by the fear that someone will one day reveal the Empress wears no clothes.

To do the correct thing because it's what the situation requires. Because YOU know what you did and because the path to true happiness wends through woods where you complete challenging tasks and thereby earn your own admiration. You should make the choice to deserve your own self-respect. You are important, yes?

We need to normalize having a conscience. Even if only professionally. To stop pretending rules are merely recommendations. Suggestions to be ignored whenever we feel they don't serve us. Or because we never bothered to learn them.

Or because someone disagrees with us, or someone waves more money in our general direction.

People's claims don't make them an expert.

You only become an expert by experience or education.

Nobody's stopping you from obtaining either. You can get both of those for free.

And you should. You matter. And people—real people—are counting on you.

#ghostwriting #publishing #freelance #linkedin #happiness