Lamentations of a Faultfinder

 It is another Friday, and I am obliged to provide yet another commute or toilet seat read. After the CEO’s speech on Tuesday, I was tempted to write about acceptance and denial; and it took a lot of energy for me to write on this topic. Well. Here we are.

Back in 2021 I received a calling to be a freelance editor and it was no less of a call than the call I got to be a doctor or that our religious leaders get to be ministers. At that point I had realized that I had a skill that other people could benefit from, so I went for it. I sat down with a good friend of mine who is particularly good at business and money making. From our discussion, I realized that there was a need for the service, and I could make more money than I imagined if I were willing to work hard and play dirty. I will explain later.

Within a week after the discussion, I called two friends of mine to design a poster or something of the sort. After minimal revisions in the designs the posters were on my WhatsApp and RK Edits was up and running. This was in July 2021. To this day, there are some people who have gotten local and international admissions and scholarships after using the RK Edits service. While it is not as much as I should be making, I have made some money from it too. That money comes in handy sometimes when friends and family have urgent needs in Malawi. The beauty of it all, however, is the satisfaction of getting a WhatsApp call from a +44, +1 or +234 number from a client you helped with a scholarship application. There is great satisfaction in seeing a company whose business plan and policies you helped contribute to and there is so much joy in seeing someone get a job or graduate from school following your contribution. You may be tempted to think that it is all rosy. It isn’t. Let me get to it.

Right from the start I knew that this work would be trouble. A friend who had a short stint in a similar venture had told me that while there was a serious need for editing and proofreading services in the country and all over, people were not willing to pay the services’ worth. The result? You spend hours and hours perfecting someone’s document and they use it. Once the fruit of your labor gets them what they want, they somehow lose their ability to remember their obligation to pay for the service and in some cases begin to trivialize it. And just like that, you do not get paid after spending hours of your time reviewing things. I have been through this several times, and ironically these things are done by the so-called friends who I know for sure will need the services again. I am talking about the same people who don’t pay but always ask you to pick the tab saying, “you are making money from RK Edits, after all”. Which money? The one you did not pay? Useless!

There is a general lack of understanding of what this editing entails and that can create problems. I am privileged to have a good client base that understands the value of my services, but occasionally I meet this person who has no effing clue of what editing entails. They would have gotten my number from a friend who would tell them of a CV guy who helps people get jobs. When they are told about how it is a paid service, they will complain saying that the reason they are contacting is that they need money which they hope they will get if they get a job. I would understand that. But then there are these cocky ones who blatantly come in and question where I get the credibility for editing someone’s personal statement for a master’s degree in a South African university. I don’t know if that is a normal question that service providers get, but I feel insulted when I get it considering that I have worked on applications that have gotten people into Ivy League schools. Life goes on, though.

The interesting bit about all this is that my work is mostly appreciated by people who can do without it. It is always that holder of a master’s degree who would come with a two-page document for review with a second pair of eyes. There will hardly be any work for me beyond moving a few full stops and comas, but they would appreciate and pay beyond my expectations. Then there are those on whose documents you spend hours. When you send their work back, they would hardly appreciate the work you have done and will negotiate the rate heavily. The painful thing is that these negotiations are not conceived from lack of money but rather lack of appreciation for the service which can potentially make them thousands of times over in monetary value.

There is another catch to this work. Sometimes you get applications from ambitious people who do not have a befitting profile for the post they are gunning for. In such cases, I am torn between letting someone know that they under qualify and hurting their self-esteem or to just doing the editing and getting paid. What I have found to be the most intuitive thing to do is to let people go through with the application which I edit at a subsidized fee. To date, there are some people who have ended up receiving alternative job offers after applying for things they did not qualify for. In the case of scholarships and university admissions, I would take the same approach too because I believe that going through the process of applying for a school or a scholarship to the end is in itself a win. The applicant learns valuable lessons that they take into the next application process. I sometimes wonder whether these are things that I just say to myself just to sleep better at night after chopping somebody’s money for editing a scholarship application when I think they are not going to get it. This work can be emotionally exhausting.

It has occurred to me that while all the money I make comes from editing, I have been providing coaching and guidance services that are equally valuable, but for which I am not paid. Here is an example. Someone comes to you asking for a review of a Chevening application. They probably have the essays drafted but probably have no idea of what program to apply for and how they should pick a UK university. Choosing a university happens to be a tough job in its own right and you help them through it, spending hours in the process. At the end of the day, you are hoping that they will send you drafts of their essays and you will be able to make a bit of cash from editing only to hear that they have changed their mind. In between the times you talked, they have realized that they are too busy to be applying for the UK things and they will be considering the next round. What that means is that the hours of coaching and guidance go down the drain. With the lack of respect for time, I am sure people who walk away from applications like that do it without any remorse. It is hard to blame them.

There is the ethical debate on editing academic work. Out here, there are guys who choose to tow the middle line between studying for a program and getting a paper legitimately and buying one from a diploma mill. These are the sort of people who have ghost writers who do all the assessments for them including the thesis. I am told that this is hot business and working on one document could cost as much as half a million in Chakwera’s currency. I have found myself wondering whether that is the sort of work I would want to get into and I lean towards a big fat NO. I feel like there are some unwritten ethical rules about the business of freelance editing and they have to be followed. If someone is to have a paper, they should earn it. On the flip side of things, the few theses I have edited have shown me an unmet need in the supervision of postgraduate students in some tertiary institutions. Here is the thing. If someone writes some things that are not up to the standard, the supervisor is obliged to point out the areas that need fixing. What I have observed is that some supervisors tell students their work is poor without telling them how they can make it better. What I pick from there is that there is still a role for freelance editors in academic work although the lines are blurred.

There we are then. The work is satisfying but it has its own challenges. In the same way we do not appreciate doctors and lawyers who we ask for medical and legal opinions without expecting to pay, some ask for editing services, with no intention whatsoever, of paying. The services you provide are life-changing but there will be people who will hardly appreciate you for what you do, and that can be frustrating. When you look at monetization, the money that comes in does not match the work you do. You get to provide services like coaching and not get paid for them when you should. The closest solution that comes to mind is that of closing shop, and resorting to doing it for free for the people who come steal your time from RK Edits in the name of friendship, anyway. Somehow it is an extreme one so I chose to take the middle line and stop advertising the service. That comes with an advantage. People don’t just come to you because they have seen a flyer. They come because someone recommended RK Edits to them, and they believe you can make a difference. The catch? People refer friends without telling them it is a paid service, and you have to look like the bad one when you tell them such work costs 25K. They leave you saying you are expensive only to find that the other providers of the same services are charging 3 times as much.

So what does one do? One raises the prices, of course. And then he begins billing people for the hours spent on coaching. Know your worth, mesa?

You probably do not use my editing service and I don’t even know why I am telling you all this, komabe chakukhosi chaphulika. I feel better now. That being said, I should mention here that RK Edits does some amazing work. You probably won't see much of advertising on my end but the amazing work is still being done mwakachetechete... despite the delayed, defaulted and heavily negotiated payments. Do try it out when you need it, but you will pay even if your surname is Kamwezi for some reason. 

Anyways. Happy weeks.