copy, right?
Important life update: I just saw a snake outside, of the garter variety (or maybe it was just a really tiny python; my knowledge of the reptilian world begins and ends with YAAGH GET IT AWAY FROM ME). I didn't shriek like a girl, but mostly because the X10 offices are in the middle of the Washington wilderness, so I wasn't exactly surprised. I've seen bunnies in the bushes before, and today there were a bunch of birds hanging out in the tree near the corner of the building, like birds sometimes do. There's a little nature trail out back, where people walk and jog and, I don't know, maybe skip merrily about, I don't really pay attention. We have a couple of picnic tables out there, so I usually eat lunch there on the days I don't drive to the mall and hit the food court. Man, the suburbs? Thrilling. Yesterday I had lunch at Safeway; y'all, somebody hold me back.
Now I think I'm going to talk about writing copy.
If you want to be a copywriter, you should go to college. I went for an English major, which is helpful because it teaches you how to write about things you don't care about at all. I liked writing essays about books I enjoyed, and I liked writing essays about books I hated, because then I could get all righteously angry, but it's the ones in between where you lack any emotional investment at all that are really trying. Unless you're lucky like me, you might end up in a job writing about things you just don't care about at all, because unfortunately there's not much demand for copy about glitter and kittens (because, honestly? glitter and kittens sell themselves, man). At the end of the day, if writing is what you want to do I think you'll like it just on principle, because it's pretty neat to get paid for what you have the ability to do and what you enjoy doing.
College is also helpful because it makes you think you know something about everything. It's much easier to be convincing when you genuinely believe you're not faking it. I honestly think I enjoy thinking analytically and having critical discussions with my friends now way more than I did in seminar classes in college. Of course, it's a lot more fun to discuss ingrained behavioral patterns and conditioning in context of The Hills Have Eyes than, you know, Heart of Darkness. One of the best parts about going to college is that you're forced to think differently about things, remove them from context and find out what they are, really, by looking at them from different points of view and seeing what else you can learn. Then, one day, you too can write vaguely pretentious blog posts where you wander aimlessly from topic to topic under the pretense of pseudo-academic rambling. Stay in school, kids!
I did a creative writing minor and I think that helps, what with all the writing workshops and learning to take criticism and revise your work and all that. The more criticism you get, the less it feels like being beaten with reeds, until by the time you graduate you can recognize that sometimes people have wise things to say. Well, probably.
Other things you will learn in college writing workshops:
1. Some people can get through an entire lifetime of schooling and still not have any idea of how to punctuate a sentence properly.
2. That will never, ever get less annoying.
3. And seriously, you will harp on it for years.
4. And when you try and think of what you learned in college writing workshops, that's all you'll be able to think of.
5. Sigh.
Today we're working on a pretty awesome project that'll make the X10 Community even more interactive. Michael's been talking about it a lot lately, and I'm excited; I adore the blog community structure, and I think it'll be a lot of fun to hear from our users as well as various members of the X10 team. I'll be sure to update here when it goes live. That's right, another opportunity be exposed to even more of my chattering - try and stifle your ecstatic applause, folks, you don't want to attract too much attention, now.