My betrothed invested me with the title of Literary Merc at some point in 2019, and it really sings to me. I think she was trying to come up with something I could tell people that sounded less sexy than “I’m a writer.” Her words.

The point is, I think about how this epithet resonates with my personal philosophy about making a living as a writer, combined with my propensity to revel in other people’s performative rage concerning subjects like ghostwriting. Let me explain.

A great many people I’ve conversed with who style themselves “eccentrics” (read, those who like to pretend they know a lot about writing and the writing world) get pretty upset when you insinuate that their favorite work of fiction may not have been written by their hero. At least there’s no way to prove it, at any rate. I stir up this conversation usually out of spite for this type of sensitivity. Book worms tend to be touchy about the identity they’ve worked desperately hard to craft, and like many people whose personalities are little more than a house of cards, they aggressively shield it from even the slightest perturbation in the atmosphere, knowing on a subconscious level how fragile it truly is.

This behavior is reminiscent of that which is often displayed by furiously (western) religious types. Apparently, the veracity of the theological and existential claims made in the name of a certain individual, hinges on the historicity of said individual’s existence; and votaries of the corollary religion will get upset if you tell them the individual in question never existed.

As a literary “gun-for-hire” I don’t much care who wrote what, and, I gotta tell you, neither do the authors. As long as everyone keeps their mouths shut and gets paid, no one cares. So, why should you? You get to read a great story and live in a state of blissful ignorance concerning the effort that went in to creating that piece. Just be happy that somebody wrote it down for you to enjoy.

Maybe Plato never really existed, but the work we attribute to him certainly does, and that has changed the world.