Samantha Garner, Freelance Web Writer & Editor

This spelling & grammar installment isn’t a pet peeve, as they usually are. It’s just general word love. I recently noticed that someone had arrived at my blog through a Google search for “grammar of ‘i am won’t.’” It took me a minute or two to understand that the question really was about the word wont. So, in case you ever come back this way, Mystery Googler, here is your answer:

What is the difference between wont and won’t?

The word wont talks about someone in the habit of doing something, or of a characteristic of something. To use it in a couple of sentences:

“Samantha was wont to think about spelling too much.”
“Tomorrow will be quiet, as Sundays are wont to be.”

The word won’t, as I bet you already know, is a contraction meaning will not.

So, this one’s easy. It’s really a spelling thing, since speaking the two words aloud will tell you right away if you’re saying the wrong one – and if you’re saying wont, people might mishear you and think you’re saying want, depending on your accent. This adds a bit more excitement to life! Actually, the pronunciation might help you determine which one you want to write out. Wont sounds like want, and you wouldn’t spell want with an apostrophe, like won’t!

Oh wow. Was I getting carried away there or what? Sorry, spelling tends to do that to me.

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 I know now that I can hold some out-of-date opinions about how to move through the world.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

This one isn’t actually a pet peeve of mine, but my huband’s. However, I think it’s an interesting one so I’m sharing it today.

Before I met my husband, I thought, like lots of others, I thought “begging the question” was the same as “raising the question” – like, “It’s Donut Friday, which begs the question – why am I not eating a donut right now?” It turned out, that’s totally incorrect.

“Begging the question” is actually a logical fallacy. Sounds complicated, but basically, begging the question is a statement that assumes its conclusion is proven correct without any evidence. Like this:

“If donuts weren’t delicious, then everyone wouldn’t eat them.”

In this sentence, the assumption is being made that its conclusion – everyone eats donuts – is true, without any proof of that. Just stating something doesn’t make it true. It’s also using that assumption as evidence that donuts are delicious. For these reasons, this sentence is begging the question.

Make sense? I hope I’ve explained that clearly. As you can tell from the examples in this post, my thought power is being eclipsed by donuts right now. My friend Teri and I have been talking about the office tradition of Donut Fridays, and I’ve decreed freelancers can also take part in it. Granted, those working from home will lack the anticipation of the endless possibility contained within the Tim Hortons box, but even still, I’m off to get a donut. Have a good day!

Yup, this is another end-of-2009 blog post!

A paid-for URL, a few redesigns and some hilarious spam – this blog’s seen a lot in 2009! I took a quick look back at some of my earlier posts and thought I’d share some of my personal highlights from Wordscience. Here are the blog posts I liked the most in 2009:

• My Life With Robertson Davies
• Office Culture for the Self-Employed
• Three Ways my Mother Can Help you be a Better Freelancer
• How the Web Has Changed Since “My Day”
• Three Ways to Find Writing Motivation When You Just Don’t Care
• Quotes on Writing and Art

Oh, this one’s not a post of mine, but I kind of wish it was, given my Spelling Thing: Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling from The Oatmeal.

I hope everyone has/is having a great New Year’s Eve!

(Photo from stock.xchng user Staszkinse)

I’ve finished Art & Fear, that book about artmaking I talked about in a previous post. I’ve returned it to its owner, but not before writing down a few lines that really resonated with me. If you’re a writer or any kind of artist, these might be interesting to you too:

“For years I set aside daytimes for artmaking and evenings for writing; at some point I reversed that schedule, and months passed before I realized my writing had dried up – not for lack of ideas, but because it turns out I process words better at midnight than midday.”

“Try, if you can, to reoccupy your own aesthetic space of a few years back, or even a few months. There is no way. You can only plunge ahead, even when that carries with it the bittersweet realization that you have already done your very best work.”

“Working within the self-imposed discipline of a particular form eases the prospect of having to reinvent yourself with each new piece.”

“New work is supposed to replace old work. If it does so by making the old work inadequate, insufficient and incomplete – well, that’s life. (Frank Lloyd Wright advised young architects to plant ivy all around their early buildings, suggesting that in time it would grow to cover their ‘youthful indiscretions.’)”

“Only the maker has a chance of knowing how important small conventions and rituals are in the practice of staying at work.”

“The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done – over and over.”

“Only in these moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art. The rest may be necessary, but it’s not art. Your job is to draw a line from your life to your art that is straight and clear.”

The last three, in particular, were my favourites. I should print them out and read them next time I’m considering taking another fiction workshop instead of writing new stories!

A year ago, I had the urge to go on a writing retreat. The problem was, the retreats available were either too expensive or too far in the future. So, to compromise, I booked a hotel room for two nights and did my own writing retreat.

I wrote an article about it for the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s member magazine, and wrote an article with DIY writing retreat tips on Suite 101. Lately, I’ve been considering making my own writing retreat again, which made me think about the whole experience and – at the risk of sounding too After-School Special – the things I learned from it.

Be picky about the hotel location

At first, I didn’t care where my hotel was, as long as it was clean and inexpensive. But then I imagined three days without being able to take a walk if I got stuck on a project, or without being able to walk somewhere to get a cup of coffee. So, the hotel I ended up booking for my writing retreat was by the river and near a lot of coffee places and restaurants. The snowstorm that showed up that weekend actually didn’t even make me regret having to go outside that much!

Oh, and yes, this hotel was a bit more expensive, but not budget-breaking (and cheaper than a traditional writing retreat, anyway).

Your room’s location is important too

The one downer about my hotel room was its proximity to the hotel lounge. There was some kind of noise going on most of the time, usually later at night when people were having some drinks and talking loudly. For me, it wasn’t so much that it kept me from writing, but more that it made me feel kind of like a hermit-y freak, shutting myself up in my room while people were having the time of their lives just outside. Of course, that kind of problem isn’t common, but it’s good to make sure your room isn’t near someplace noisy like a lounge or elevators.

Take every advantage to talk to people

Doing your own writing retreat means you need to be disciplined, sitting in your room for most of the day. However, sitting silently and alone in a hotel room for hours can make you go a bit doolally (and paranoid that the people in the hotel lounge are laughing at you). Like in my post about how to not lose your mind while working from home, human communication is important. For me, it was mostly people who worked at coffee shops. I may have overdid my responses to their how are yous, but the important thing is I didn’t become isolated and weird.

Don’t overthink the outcome of your writing retreat

I went on the retreat to work on a novel that I had expanded from a short story. Over the course of the weekend, I changed the point of view. Then I changed it back to a short story. Both of these things were not at all what I was expecting to happen and at first it bugged me. But really, it was good. That story is still a story, and it’s better than it would have been if it was a third-person novel. As long as you write, it’s not a wasted trip.