Samantha Garner, Freelance Web Writer & Editor

Oof. What busy times I’ve seen since my last post! On Friday I left on a last-minute trip to visit my parents in Ontario, returning on Monday to a busy workload. While I was at my parents’, I did unearth some . . . interesting material from my writerly past that I have planned for a blog post once I can sit down and prepare it. In the meantime, here are some good things other people have written recently:

• Are Your Clients Really Getting Your Best? from Men With Pens.
• Teri Vlassopoulos blogs about choosing the name of her new short story collection.
• Lija at The Writer’s Pet writes about Fifth Business, a favourite novel we have in common!
• An article about the writing advice industry at the Globe & Mail.

Another plagiarism accusation’s popped up in the book world, this time involving a teenage author. Not that every teenage writer does it, but I mean: I wrote two books when I was 13/14 and – I’m not gonna lie – they were pretty blatant ripoffs of The Outsiders. Anyway, from the Independent:

Ms Hegeman, whose father is the renowned German literary director and theatre professor Carl Hegemann, has already written a play and the script to her own film. But her novel about a 16-year-old girl who suffers the death of her mother and subsequently plumbs the depths of wild sex and heavy drug taking on Berlin’s techno music scene has been her first runaway success.

Read the full article here.

The post title comes from a question I came across on LinkedIn a few months ago, and it’s been knocking around in my head ever since. I suppose the only way to really answer this question is subjectively. There isn’t, as far as I know (and if there is, I bet I’m in trouble), a governing body for copywriters that calls us to a copywriting bar or something.

So. What education is needed to become a copywriter? My subjective answer is: absolutely none. And here is why I say this: I am a copywriter and I have no education.

Well, not no education. I did graduate high school, but that’s about it. I know now that I can hold some out-of-date opinions about how to move through the world. This was evidenced when, upon graduating high school, I decided it would be more logical to spend my post-high school years in the working world. I would enter at the lowest level and work my way up, just like in the wholesome ’50s! At the time, I dreamed of working in publishing. I sent my wee resume along to every publisher in Toronto, with a cheeky letter saying, essentially, “I love books and will sweep floors if I have to.” I was surprised at the time that nobody took me up on this too-good-to-miss offer.

I ended up working in restaurants, pursuing web and magazine writing opportunities as they arose in my free time. As always, I read a lot and wrote as much as I could, getting used to adapting my voice and tone to the subject matter. After a few years I moved to Calgary and began working office jobs, including my first marketing & communications job, which I held for five years. The rest, if I may be cheesy, is history.

Now, I’m not advocating shunning post-secondary education in the least. In fact, by rights I shouldn’t have even got that job I just mentioned – the posting called for someone with a BA. It was just luck that they overlooked that. I’m merely saying that, with copywriting, all you really need to succeed is a good grasp of spelling and grammar and a way with words. I have those things naturally (tooting my own horn, yes). I like to think that early employers took a chance on me because they liked my writing (I still hold the record for best speller at the aforementioned marketing & communications job), and sensed how much I love writing.  As a freelance copywriter, I’ve not had a single prospective client ask about my education. They only care about how awesome I can make their project sound. In the end, experience spoke louder for me than any degree I could get.

What do you think? Is higher education necessary to become a copywriter?

(Image courtesy of stock.xchng user tsunei.)

So I’m reading this novel right now. It’s good, but it uses the word “which” in a way that really bugs me. This spelling & grammar pet peeve has been a fairly recent, but intense, one of mine for the past couple of years.

Dear editor of novel: The word “which” is not a synonym for “and,” “anyway” or even a period. Here is an example from the book:

“And if you tell him you saw me smoking, I will banish you to the lowest circle of hell. Which I’ve never been there, but . . .”

Now I’m not going to get all academic on you here (I couldn’t even if I wanted to, anyway), but “which” is a pronoun. That means it refers directly to something that’s been mentioned in a conversation, or refers to the people having the conversation.

The character in the example I used should say either, ” . . . the lowest circle of hell, which I’ve never been to, but . . .” or drop it altogether. If he says which in the way I just suggested, he’s referring directly to the lowest circle of hell. In the way that appears the book, he’s using it to refer to, “I’ve never been there” – a future, entirely new point – which is redundant and makes no sense at all. He’s using which to indicate an afterthought, in which case a, “come to think of it” at the beginning or “anyway” at the end of the thought would suffice. Actually, in this example, dropping it altogether would make the most sense.

I know the example I used is from a character speaking, but that doesn’t make it right! Using which to signify an afterthought or make a new point isn’t a regionalism as far as I know, so it gets no pass from me. No sir!

I hope the above made sense. The thing with me is I usually feel it when a word is used wrong or a sentence is composed badly, but I can’t often put it into words. A loud clanging bell goes off somewhere in my torso. I think it’s my mutant superpower.

The above is a tagline from an Ontario tourism campaign that, I don’t mind saying, used to bring me to tears when I first moved to Alberta and was terribly homesick.

My dear friend Suzen and I, among the many things we have in common, share the unique preoccupation with Home that only being away from it can bring. Admittedly, her Home, Newfoundland, is a bit more picturesque and immediately evocative than mine. However, Ontario works its way into almost everything I write. There’s even a literary style named for my home region, though I don’t think my fiction fits into it – much as I’d love it to.

So, it made my wee expat heart soar to read:

This summer, Ontario’s literary history will become a permanent part of the province’s physical landscape with a new project called Ontario: Read It Here.

A series of eight plaques will be installed across the province in the exact geographic location where Ontario-based literary scenes takes place.

The full article can be read here. Having lived here in Alberta for nearly a decade, I’ve taken my fair share of lumps about being an Ontarian. Say what you will about Ontario – I’m excited about this and wish I could see it!

The other day, I made a post about Doris Lessing. Below is a video which further illustrates why I think she’s so great. She discovers she’s won the Nobel Prize for literature and is kind of sassy about it. She’s old, was taken off-guard and was previously disliked by Nobel representatives, so this response is pretty great. Observe: