FAQ

What does a Copywriter/Editor do?

Simply put, as a copywriter I can help you write anything from brochures, website content, blog posts, social media posts, recipes, menus, labels, you get it. Anything. As an Editor, I look over articles, essays, reviews, or pre-written copy of any kind and give detailed notes and make changes in grammar and punctuation. 

Why?

Copywriter: You might hire a copywriter if you want to look professional and be sure you are meeting industry standards.

Editor: Even the best writers use editors to help perfect and shape their writing. I do. They are often the ones to breathe fresh air into a piece of writing or the ones who are able to see something you, as the writer, had overlooked. 

How much?

I like to price according to project. The best way for me to give you a price is to get in contact with me - I offer a free 30-minute discovery session - where we can go over the specifics of your project and I will give you a quote.  

Recently I bumped into someone who I hadn’t seen in a long time. 

‘You look like you have a lovely life,’ she said. ‘And a beautiful baby.’ 

Wow, I had forgotten that we followed each other on social media and that she was seeing all my recent updates. It happens that easily. Sometimes you forget who your audience is and the extent of it. We are supposed to want as many followers as we can get, right? But I find it hard to conceive of many people, other than my close friends, seeing my content. When we post we have an idea of how it will be interpreted, and that idea is shaped by our actual in-person relationships. I know that my friends will like my photos because I like them. But I am sometimes shocked when extended friends or contacts do because, mostly, I am used to getting no attention at all on social media. But I wonder what responsibility do we have to our more distant viewers and how they interpret our content?

I do have a lovely life and beautiful daughter but also there’s no photo that can capture the feeling of wanting to disintegrate into thin air. It’s just an intermittent longing to become invisible. Imagine the peace that would reign! Instead, I surrender my physical body again and again to a toddler who wants to climb on me and leave a glistening trail of snot across my breast. If there were such a photo, would I post it? Why? What would be the point? Do we ask too much of social media? Social media is not real life. We are all well aware of the pitfalls to mental health if we spend too much time on it these days. It should be used for a quick dopamine hit and then back to reality kiddo, get outdoors. 

But in reality, it is very easy to accidentally spend half the day scrolling, scrolling, comparing, shopping, self-loathing. Sometimes we can forget that these platforms have been specifically designed to keep us on them, our algorithms built to sustain our attentions. And, what holds our attention may not necessarily be something we want to continually see.

Users of social media are more likely to engage with a post – re-share or like it, if it evokes anger in them. For this reason, algorithms select content that is likely to outrage its viewer. The content we are fed is designed to illicit an emotional reaction from us.

But many people rely on social media for their businesses and branding and there’s never been more pressure to have the perfect social media account that tells your brands story. In most cases, the success of your business depends on it. And if you make, do, or are something then how on earth would you tell people about it if not via social media?

But how can we do this responsibly? And what are we meant to do with the endless stream of people’s best moments?

I am aware that from my recent holiday I have posted photos of blue water and white sand and friends lounging, but no one was taking photos at 6am as I violently shoved my clothes into my suitcase and the villa woke to a wailing toddler with a nasty cough. The truth is sometimes we were relaxing by the pool and other times we were convincing a Spanish pharmacist to sell us a puffer, stressing about my daughters raspy breathing, forcing her little face into a plastic mask and pumping Ventolin into her down-turned mouth.

The problem social media poses is that you only see the pool. Which in turn means you think my life is perfect and yours is a muddle, even though you probably know that can’t be right. We have to continually recalibrate our minds to account for the difference in what we’re seeing and what we know to be true.

I am reminded of the existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger’s arguments on inauthenticity from Being and Time (1927). Side note: Long after I was introduced to Heidegger, I found out he became a fascist…which sucks because his earlier work was so interesting. Can an idea ever still be worthy in the aftermath of fascism? That’s surely a different essay. To be sure, he’s not the only philosopher to float this vibe, but he is well known for it. (See also Sartre’s Bad Faith). 

Heidegger's concept of inauthenticity describes a state in which individuals live disconnected from their authentic self, conforming to societal norms and distractions characterised by idle-talk, ambiguity, and curiosity. Heidegger considers being in the realm of the ‘they’ an inauthentic mode of being. When one is engaged in that realm, they cannot realise their absolute singularity. Our singularity is defined by our freedom to choose our ‘mineness,’ and most importantly our being-towards-death. Heidegger believes everybody lives in relation to their death. We are confronted with our individuality when we realise our ‘own most possibility is death.’ We are always being-towards-death and are unfinished projects (macabre, I know!)

It’s quite likely that at some point in the future Facebook will contain more pages of the dead then the living. But Facebook and other social media sites are never about being-towards-death. They are about creating a life online, adding metaphorical layers, upon layers to one’s identity, collecting likes and dislikes, drawing us away from our physical being and into cyberspace.

For Heidegger, authenticity involves confronting one's existence, questioning societal expectations, and taking responsibility for one's choices and values. For one to encounter their truest self, something must trigger them into a state of anxiety in which the world is revealed as insignificant. In this state of anxiety, one can either choose to accept or reject their authentic being.

Heidegger’s view of inauthenticity correlates closely to my view of social media, but I like to think that rather than totally rejecting it, I can instead bring some authenticity to it. Confront my anxiety and be my true self. Furthermore, social media isn’t totally a negative place. Something has to be said for people who find a community online that they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to, and that validates them and makes them feel more at peace with who they are. But how can we contribute to social media in a positive way?

I draw up some new guidelines for myself. It is my responsibility as a user of these platforms to do so in an authentic manner. We create these spaces, and we can change them. We don’t have to tell sob-stories or a dark-truths (although I do like that), but we can start conversations, like this one, or post photos that depict something true. Not always glossy, not always perfect. 

I know it was probably a publicity stunt, but there was something deeply refreshing about scrolling through Instagram and seeing Pamela Anderson at Paris Fashion Week wearing no makeup. Yes Pamela! I applaud these small resistances to mainstream expectations, however trivial they are.

What Heidegger asks us to do is embrace ourselves at the essence of our core, rather than cover it up with idle-talk, ambiguity, and curiosity. It seems undeniable that social media interactions are often idle talk between friends, searching pages to find information about people or events, or ambiguous scrolling. But perhaps, through these inauthentic behaviours we are given the opportunity to realise the meaninglessness of our existence and resituate our priorities and beliefs, thus leading us to be more authentic online and in our daily lives.

If you need it, here is your reminder: social media is social media. 

You will find this essay and more on my Substack by clicking here.