Samantha Garner, Freelance Web Writer & Editor

Yes, this looks like an ad for Ikea’s Poäng chair, but it’s not. This is my favourite writing spot in the house. There are windows along one wall and continuing for a bit around a corner, so I feel surrounded by light. And, okay, the Poäng chair is pretty comfortable too.

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 I know now that I can hold some out-of-date opinions about how to move through the world.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.)

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!

A few posts ago, I mentioned how I used to always confuse Mavis Gallant with Doris Lessing. I learned my lesson once and for all after I accidentally bought a copy of the first volume of Lessing’s autobiography. I’d picked it up from a discount book store in St. Jacob’s, Ontario, when visiting my parents. At first I was very excited about it, because I was confused, thinking Mavis Gallant. I didn’t realize my mixup until I returned home and started reading.

I decided to continue once I realized my mistake. I was disheartened at the beginning because it started out so confusingly, Lessing listing her grandparents and talking about them in a way that was hard to follow. I almost gave up, especially since the book was volume one of two and not at all short. But, happily, it got loads better. There wasn’t really a structure to the autobiography. I mean, yes, she does tell her story chronologically, but she digresses into stories and memories that might not have to do with the “plot,” at least not obviously. And she does this in such a compelling way; her stories are so interesting and her tone is so engaging. She was born in Iran and grew up in Zimbabwe, the daughter of British parents who were farming in “the colonies,” and was also a Communist. Though she seemed to like living there (even if her childhood wasn’t perfect), she has a pretty realistic view of this time in history; she leans towards the side of “this was a kind of ridiculous time and I tried to change it in my own way.” Also, I love when people branch off into side stories, especially elderly people who often have a lot of great stories.

Anyway, I read the book eagerly and am now reading the second volume, starting after she leaves Zimbabwe for England with her young son. She writes about her writing process and I thought it’d be useful to share. She writes:

Impossible to describe a writer’s life, for the real part of it cannot be written down. How did my day go in those early days in London, in Church Street? I woke at five, when the child did. He came into my bed, and I told or read him stories or rhymes. We got dressed, he ate, and then I took him to the school up the street . . . I shopped a little, and then my real day began. The feverish need to get this or that done . . . had to be subdued to the flat, dull state one needs to write in . . .

And now, on the little table that has been cleared of breakfast things, replaced by scattered sheets of paper, is the typewriter, waiting for me. Work begins. I do not sit down but wander around the room. I think on my feet . . . I find myself in the chair by the machine. I write a sentence . . . will it stand? But never mind, look at it later, just get on with it, get the flow started. And so it goes on. I walk and I prowl, my hands busy with this and that . . . I walk, I write. If the telephone rings I try to answer it without breaking the concentration. And so it goes on, all day, until it is time to fetch the child from school or until he arrives at the door . . .

So that’s the outline of a day. But nowhere in it is there the truth of the process of writing. I fall back on that useful word ‘wool-gathering.’ And this goes on when you are shopping, cooking, anything. You are reading but find the book has lowered itself: you are wool-gathering. The creative dark. Incommunicable.

She then goes on to recount how different publishing was back then, in the ’50s, how there used to be a close relationship between writer and publisher/editor, and books were sometimes published even though they wouldn’t make any money – just because they were good. Thoroughly depressing. This is why I like small/independent publishing. For the love! Or any other, less cheesy, phrase you’d like to substitute.

Anyway, this was long but I hope it was interesting. Personally, I can’t get enough of reading about the writing/creative process!

A few weeks ago, I turned on the TV randomly to find PBS was airing a special on Mavis Gallant. I watched happily, because I love her. I discovered her quite late, via a Writers & Company podcast a few years ago. To be honest, I haven’t even read too much of her work, but I love her all the same. I like that she’s kind of scrappy and refuses to answer any questions she feels breaches her privacy. I like that she hasn’t lived in Canada for decades and isn’t a particular paragon of the CanLit “scene,” yet we haven’t turned our backs on her.

I like her more now that I’ve finally stopped confusing her, for some reason, with Doris Lessing, who have little in common besides their relative age and scrappiness (I’m sensing a theme here). I had my notebook ready to write down things Gallant said during her interviews, but I was so focused on listening and wrote nothing down. These photos I took will have to do!

I’m taking the day to focus on some fiction writing now that a fairly large freelance editing project I’ve been working on is winding down. I bought a new literary magazine yesterday and I’ve been eyeing it all morning. Cup of tea, lit mag, writing – perfect!

Here are some things that I’ve been excited about this week:

• My dear friend Teri is publishing her first short story collection. I’ve known Teri for a long time and have been fortunate enough to read several of her stories – she’s always been one of my favourite writers. I’m so excited for her and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving writer!
• Margaret Atwood’s Three Reasons to Keep Paper Books. (Also, I love the URL of her blog. “marg09″? Love her!)

Anyway, I hope you’re having a good week so far!