Dear Copywriter: Help me - I don't love words!

Loving words is all well and good, says Copywriter, but it's not necessarily good for your work.

Dear Copywriter,

I’m just starting as a copywriter, and have picked up my first client! They said they are really excited to work with me, and the CEO said he loves writing so he’ll be a great guy to get feedback from.

But I am worried about something I haven’t told anyone yet. My copy confession is that, despite buying a Roget’s Thesaurus and that writing book by Stephen King, and that really weird one by Verlyn Klinkenborg, and despite me sharing lots of LinkedIn posts about how much I love words, the truth is that I don’t really love words.

Don’t get me wrong - I love reading old Ogilvy ads as much as the next guy, I follow the Booker contenders like a fiend - but I don’t think I could say I love words in the way other copywriters seem to.

Does that mean I should quit being a copywriter? I could become a content writer instead, as I assume they have lower standards.

Yours,

Clive Eloquence

Dear Clive,

Congratulations on your career choice, and for picking up your first client. I’m sure that CEO will have a lot to say.

As for your confession: oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

I have bad news and good news. The bad news, Clive, is that you have announced yourself as a traitor. I hope that you’ve used a pen name because you’ll never be able to tell anyone about this - not your growing LinkedIn connections, your clients, your Xes, or your mum (she’ll only disagree and tell you that you’ve loved words since before you could write, and pull out your old creative writing exercises from primary school).

There is some good news, though. The good news is that it doesn’t matter at all. No, let me rephrase: the good news is that it could be your saving grace.

Copywriters who really love words can be guilty of overdoing it a bit, getting too clever for their own good, too self-indulgent to be persuasive. Copywriters who love words too much can be like the guy who has all the pro DIY tools and never gets around to fixing the squeaky door. All the gear with no idea.

Loving words can make you too attached to puns, clever twists and fancy verbiage. It makes you proud and clouds your judgement, and you focus too much on writing award-winning copy and not enough on doing what the brief asks.

Copywriting takes a bit of coldness. Good copywriters respect utilitarian words, common words, ordinary and plain words. My favourite copywriter David Abbott said this:

“Words for me are the servants of the argument, and on the whole I like them to be plain, simple and familiar.”

But there’s always more. In an interview with William Channer, later in life, Abbott admits that:

“When you start off in copywriting, you fall in love with words. In my early days in advertising, I used to be an inveterate punster. As I got older and wiser, my style became more plain."

Robert Pirosh’s famous 1934 letter to Hollywood executives has been doing the rounds on LinkedIn. He was a copywriter who loved words so much that he quit being a copywriter and did something that came closer to requiting his love.

If you, like Pirosh, love fat buttery words, crunchy brittle words, wormy squirmy words, then pour that love into something. Write fiction, screenplays, poetry, lyrics. Write things nobody will ever see, write for competitions, write for pleasure. Write for yourself.

Because to write good ads, you’ll need to learn to kill your darlings. It’s much harder when you love them.

C