When I first graduated from my MFA program, I jumped at the opportunity to become a staff writer. The soft cocoon of academia had swaddled me for as long as possible. And, finally, it was time to secure a day job. I met a lot of other passionate writers in the same position as me. We worked hard—we weren’t paid well, but we had bylines, and we were happy.
Time flew by, and we enjoyed our day jobs as we miraculously made rent payments and supported creative side hustles simultaneously. At some point, the company decided that we didn’t need bylines anymore, effectively making us ghostwriters without changing our titles. Each name was stealthily deleted, erasing our fingerprints from our work over the years. It was a simple business decision—nothing personal. And yet, that’s when I started noticing something worrisome: burnout began to spread like wildfire among my colleagues.
It’s been studied that increasing salaries can decrease cases of burnout, even without changing anything about work-life balance. Somehow, receiving fair compensation for your work helps people deal with the stress of long hours and time pressure.
For creatives, perhaps bylines work similarly. Maybe we considered it a part of our compensation. As the physical and mental health of my cohort began to deteriorate, I reflected on this connection between recognition and well-being. Other names stood in the lines where ours once did. It wasn’t just about not receiving credit for what we’d written—it was about watching others actively taking credit for the work we’d bled, sweat, and cried over.
Ghostwriting requires a particular skill set, and it’s not for everybody. For some, it kills creativity; others are haunted by the feeling that they no longer exist.