Not long before I started my freelance career, my mother and I were discussing what would be involved in the job. I had been an editor at a large publishing house for 8+ years, and she knew what that had entailed--acquiring manuscripts for publication, offering feedback on manuscripts, suggesting titles, schmoozing with agents, etc. But, like most people, she was less familiar with the concept of ghostwriting. As I explained what ghostwriters do--take someone's (the "author's") ideas and/or stories and turn them into a compelling written work (a book, article, blog post, speech, etc)--she paused. "Why would you want to write something that someone else gets credit for?" she asked.

It's a fair question. After all, ghostwriters are called "ghostwriters" because they are supposed to be invisible--playing off their writing as someone else's. True ghosts are not even credited on the book so, for all the reader knows, the author wrote it him or herself. Writing is a creative profession, an art, if you will. Why would you want to cede recognition for that to someone else?

"I don't care about that," I said. And I didn't. I've never cared about it. That's why I became an editor in the first place.

A couple of years ago, I acquired a book called Invisibles by a journalist named David Zweig. The premise of the book was that there is an entire class of highly skilled workers throughout society who are undervalued because their work is largely invisible. In fact, Zweig argued, the better an Invisible does his or her job, the less they are noticed. Examples that Zweig cited included fact checkers, interpreters, and wayfinders (the people who design signs that help you navigate your way through, say, an airport). The point of the book was not simply to acknowledge these people but to argue that we should place more value on the inherent qualities they possess--things like conscientiousness and a passion for the work for the work's sake.

When I first started working with Zweig, he told me that he didn't consider editors to be Invisibles because they got too much recognition from society at large. I took his point--after all "editor" is one of those jobs that women in rom-coms often have (along with "journalist" and "interior designer," and "some vague non-profit job") indicating that many people have at least a dim idea of what they do (you don't want to spend too much time explaining a character's professional life when the focus is on how to get the guy). The career is also, thanks to these portrayals, considered glamorous (many of us live in New York and hobnob with Serious and Important people, after all). A few famous editors have even become famous in their own right (think Judith Jones or Maxwell Perkins).

But when was the last time you read a book and thought, "Wow! This is extremely well edited!" Now, when was the last time you read something and thought "Jeez, this could have used a better editor." I bet I can guess.

I remember one of the first books I edited received several reviews criticizing the amount of repetition throughout. "Fire the editor!" exclaimed the headline of one Amazon review. I was heartbroken, mostly because I agreed. What the reviewers didn't know was that I had, in fact, repeatedly tried removing several instances of repetition but because the author and I were working on an extremely tight deadline and editing the book in pieces (not ideal to ensure consistency), she kept adding pieces back in, probably under the assumption that they weren't already included. And I, having read the book out of order so many times, started forgetting what had been mentioned and what hadn't.

So, no, I don't get credit from the general public for the editing I do. However, I do get credit from my authors, and that's what I got into this business for. I've always been a decent writer, but I realized early on that I preferred (and was better at) helping others make their writing better. My best days are the ones when an author says to me, "Wow! You're such a great editor! Thank you!" That's all the credit I need.