The Long Story Short: Why Advertising?
I love (love) playing with words in just about every way. SEO optimizing a blog feels akin to writing a villanelle or sestina; A/B testing emails feels like re-cutting a movie with different cinematography. At the sentence level — every syllable, every snippet of diction and stretch of syntax — I strive to have linguistically pleasing, innately poetic copy without ever crossing the Rubicon into “formally poetic” or “stuffy.” If the mandate of all good content is that it must both entertain and inform, I do my damndest to always meet the mandate with both the individual parts and collective whole — I don’t just want the entire body of writing to hook the reader, I want the whole hook itself to be comprised of smaller hooks.
Writing for brands (be it advertising or marketing) is a hell of a way to make a living doing what I love.
The Long Story Long: Origin Story
A little backstory about me: I graduated from Southern Methodist University with my BA in May 2016. While there, I double-majored in Advertising and English (specializing in Creative Writing), while secretly wishing to be a film major as well.
A lot more backstory about me: For much of my youth, I was a competitive swimmer. Swim practice was a (prominent) daily occurrence for all of middle school, high school and college. “Swimmer” was the central pillar of my identity for that same stretch of time. Athletes will often refer to training as “the grind,” and while I referenced it sardonically on my social media, I earnestly enjoyed it. It was my first love — putting in months of work to see a tangible payoff at the end of the season was a natural high I cherished. Improving day-to-day was an “a-ha” moment, like a toddler delighting in their first experience with bubble wrap.
The thing about swimming as a sport is that, when you boil it down, you’re competing to see who’s the best at not drowning. Who can go (X) distance in the shortest amount of time. To achieve this, you pretty much have to adopt the life of a goldfish. For eight years (high school and college), I would regularly spend 20 to 25 hours a week training. This involved staring at the black line on the bottom of the pool while going various distances at various speeds. Running and lifting weights where also in the mix, and they were extremely exciting because they did not involve staring at a black line at the bottom of the pool.
You do this enough, and you start to get “dual minds.” I don’t mean this like there’s a second voice in my head; I mean multiple trains of thought. On the one track, I’m thinking things like “I’m at this guy’s (the person swimming in the lane next to me) ribs right now, if I surge a little heading into the turn I can be neck-and-neck with him coming off the wall.” Or “I just went a :24 on that 50 yards, if I can pick up the tempo off the breakout I can probably push a :23 on the next one.” Or “I need to back off my legs the first 100 yards so I can start building to a surge at the halfway point.” Or even “I need to fix my left-hand position by like five degrees each stroke.” Swimming is an insanely minute sport once you get past the “stroke stroke breath stroke” introductory stage.
The other track was my cure for the goldfish’s lifestyle: Stories! Hypotheticals! What-ifs! For the more tedious yardage, I let my imagination run absolutely wild. Within the confines of a pool (no noise beyond snippets above the surface, no one to talk to, not much to look at) my imagination was utterly unconstrained. This is where my penchant for stories was born.
Fast forward to sophomore year of college: Potential majors are dropping like flies with each course I take. Anthropology is a no. Psychology is a no. Philosophy is a maybe. I take an “Intro to Creative Writing” course from English… hard yes. This is the second bubble-wrap moment — pouring a story out onto the page is invigorating. Receiving the marked-up draft from the professor is the third bubble-wrap moment. Seeing how the writing can improve is akin to the minute grind of swimming; it clicked. I loved it.
It was only a hop and a skip for the creative writing bug to find copywriting. I'm passionate about telling interesting stories, and I enjoy the unique nature of crafting copy for brands. Subsequently, it's incredibly fulfilling to see a successful story influence business and connect with consumers. This also proves an excellent outlet for all the competitive juices that were displaced by the conclusion of swimming. Summed up, something about the challenge of conjuring the perfect set of words to present an idea I find highly addictive, and I am in no rush to cure this specific vice.
Long-term creative goals besides a successful and fulfilling career in copywriting would be: Pursuing an MFA in creative writing, getting a book of poetry published, having a short film I'd written accepted into a film festival, riding a bull, wrestling a bear, and a family. I would wrestle the family at an occasion independent from when I wrestled the bear, though.
If any or all of the attributes and skills discussed above strike your fancy, I'll gander that we could certainly help each other.