Twelve days in a row writing the same marketing copy for a project we started in July that was supposed to end in September. Sitting at my desk in the bedroom while the sun set reading it a final time before shipping it to the client. Pouring a drink, then returning to the sofa with my pizza.

Next door they took out five or six really big trees, by the looks of it. Muddy paths across the lawn from the tractors, all the men with hard hats and gloves like animated figures. Now, all this new light comes in from the north but feels unnatural. I dreamt the trees looked like candle stubs, snapped in half.

Writing marketing copy is a lot harder than I thought. I just figured if I could write poetically that would transfer to marketing, somehow. And it does, but only sometimes. Combining global presence with a local touch. That’s one I was proud of, they liked. It’s hard to be poetic with technology marketing, but important just the same. And so much of it’s just rhythm I think, how it sounds. We want things to be fluid and simple, we need that.

I got short with the guy working with me on the project, at the end. I was sick, bed-bound sick, on my fifth client review of the week. Having to pitch the final copy to them and sit back in silence as they read, waiting for their comments. And then defend our logic and rewrite it, again.

I wrote the final copy blocks and he said don’t you think we’ll need to rewrite those and I said, do you think you can do better?, as a kind of challenge–and then I immediately felt small, and had to apologize. It was November 9, and we’d now spent four months on about six PowerPoint slides.

Dawn watched a video in bed and I tried to sleep, woke in the early morning for aspirin, to blow my nose. Outside, the sound of coyotes yipping like they’d gotten something and were circling in for the kill. I went back to the dream I left, reassuming the outline of my body, told myself it’s Saturday, try to sleep in.

Categories: writing

Tags: journal writing, marketing, Memoir, pacific northwest, technology writing, William Pearse writer