I love being a professional copywriter, but it has its downsides…
This isn’t even the full list, by the way, but rather the first few things that came to mind whilst wrestling with the cat…
1. You spend a lot of time wrestling with the cat (told you), who sees your glowing laptop as the comfiest nap spot in the whole wide world. And yes, I could just shove Barry out of the way, but he’ll literally bounce right back! And if he doesn’t, by god I’ll pay for it later… it’s a false economy.
2. The writing process takes over your entire life, and you start to treat routine written tasks as professional projects. Essentially, this means that you will lose hours of your life pondering whether that text you’re sending to your window cleaner should have a comma or a semi-colon in that second sentence. Within seconds, a quick proofread has turned into a second edit, revised copy, and complete redraft.
3. You’ll stumble upon the infamous ‘writer’s block’. Yes, it’s real, and its a seemingly immovable object whose forcefield will cause you to grapple with entire days at a time where you just KNOW everything you write is utter rubbish and serves no point whatsoever.
4. You start utilising key words so much as part of SEO or to give your client the exposure they asked for, that you start to doubt if they’re even real words anymore. At best, you’ll accept that the word is real, but you’ll grow to resent the damn thing and its seemingly very limited set of synonyms.
5. When you realise, on those rarest of occasions of course, that you’ve made a bloody mistake in a piece you’ve published, you start to judge your entire career on it and insist on giving up your business because you are the very definition of a disgrace to your profession. Take my laptop, I have no use for it now…
6. Everyone thinks your job “takes two minutes”. Sure, I can spot mistakes in two seconds, but to repair the damage amassed over eight sides of A4, Elaine, no, that will take a little longer.
7. Some people will always prefer style over substance, and will happily pay hundreds or even thousands of pounds for a website, but vocally resent having to pay you anything at all to ensure the content featured on it is even any good.
8. You develop a nervous tick any time somebody suggests they’ll “just use SpellCheck” instead of seeking the advice or skill of a human professional. Yep, SpellCheck knows exactly what you want to say and what you mean when you type it, Geoff. That’s why its full name is ContextMeaningAndClarityCheck. For duck’s sake…
9. You need to move the bloody cat again.
Fellow writers – am I missing anything?
Oh, and this cat is not Barry, and this laptop is not mine. Why? Because Barry is currently asleep on my phone.
