I'm so Tired

In in the midst of yet another retail holiday, I'm trying to balance left brain tasks (keeping track of the production schedule and managing the site change calendar) with right brain (writing copy and creative for graphics). Rapidly switching between the two can be challenging on a good day. On a crazy-busy day full of executives changing direction and mindset it can feel nearly impossible. My brain (both sides) is tired. I needed to write some email copy yesterday morning and I had nothing. Not a great state to find myself in at the beginning of November.

After years in marketing, I'm mostly used to trying to be creative on demand and fit into given parameters. A unique, compelling email subject line in 36 characters or less? Okay. Headlines for site graphics, six words maximum? No problem. But I'm going to be grammatically correct if it kills me, and yes, it does matter. A boss I worked for years ago liked to tell me, "This is advertising, not English class." Um, okay...but I'm not going to perpetuate any word crimes just because everyone else does. My current pet peeve is the overuse of "gift" as a verb, as in "holiday gifting." Really? My boss wanted me to use the word in that context in an email subject line the other day. I told him it would cost him and I wasn't kidding.

As I was pondering why I care, and wondering why I can't just churn out mediocre copy about products I'm not emotionally attached to, I remembered a story I heard on NPR a few years ago about a technical writer who had just won a national poetry prize, in the first contest she'd entered. The interviewer wondered how a technical writer had come to be a poet and asked if it was difficult to go back to a cut and dried tech piece after writing a poem. The writer's response has stayed with me: "You have to engage your audience no matter what you’re writing." Oh. And duh. It doesn't matter what I'm writing about, or who is (or isn't) going to read it. I just need to work my craft and keep getting better at it.