Writing & Words

Copywriter loneliness: crafting connection while feeling disconnected

Your job is to understand people well enough to move them. You do this alone, at a desk, for clients you mostly never meet.

Writing for connection, from isolation

Good copy requires empathy — you have to inhabit the perspective of the reader, understand their fears and desires, speak to them in a voice that feels human and warm. It's emotionally demanding work that requires you to simulate social connection while experiencing none of it. You write relationship while living solitude.

After a long day of writing persuasive, warm, human-sounding copy, the flatness of your own quiet apartment can feel particularly stark. You've been performing humanity all day. What remains is the private absence.

The ghostwriting problem

Much of the best copywriting ends up attributed to someone else — the brand, the CEO, the client. You put genuine thought and craft into words that go out under another name. The invisibility of this is a minor version of a loneliness specific to the profession: your voice is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Unlike an author, a copywriter rarely gets to be known for their work. The connection between your effort and any recognition is systematically severed by the nature of the job.

Your own voice, in a real conversation

Mindfuse is an anonymous voice call app. You speak in your own voice, to a real stranger, about whatever's on your mind — not a brand's mind. First conversation free. €4/month. iOS and Android.

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