Being a copywriter is a little like being a lesser-known superhero. I don’t mean that we look good in leotards or that we spend much of the time in ill-frequented back corners of comic shops, though both are often true. It’s just that no one outside of our field understands exactly what it is that we do.

I’ve touched on this topic before, about what copywriting is and isn’t, but I’ve given up trying to educate the public. Screw that. I’m going to learn how to work with their misconceptions. I like the word yes. It rolls off the tongue. It gets me into some of the more peculiar, story-producing situations that elevate my life from banal to batshit. So the next time a stranger assumes that what I do involves a law degree, room full of Xerox machines, or an endless supply of black pens, I’m just going to smile, nod, and say yes by preemptively determining in my head that any possible misunderstanding is actually fact. Here’s how.

Possible misconception #1 – Copywriters copy stuff. Over and over again. And over again.

Uh-huh.

It’s understandable. The word “copy” and the word “writer” are in such close proximity. It nearly seems obvious. Of course I’d just sit at a desk and scribble the Oxford English Dictionary word by word. That’s how you get all those pretty books anyway. Copywriters.

I might itch to correct the next man, woman, or child who makes this innocent mistake, but I’m not going to. After all, a lot of the process of writing copy is repetitive. The client might want one idea restated a hundred different ways. They might like a particular phrase or word and want it woven into every aspect of their advertising, website text, or advertorial. And isn’t that just what being a creative is? Simply regurgitating the same concept an infinite number of ways in the hope that the umpteenth idea has a glimmer of originality glinting off of its cloned frame? So, sure, bro. I’m a copywriter. I copy and write for a living.

Possible misconception #2 – Copywriters right copy.

Yup.

This is the closest to truth you can get, maybe. Often a client will hand over their site or pre-written drafts with a sheepish look in their eyes, a down-turned gaze, or worse, a declaration of how terrible it is, said with the caveat of, “Can you keep this part…and this part…and oh, that sentence right there?”

Part of copywriting is that you are a magician. You make people want to spend money, you compel them to look at a product or company twice, you entice and captivate them with the voice, concept, or overall feeling of the words. But a lot of what you do is fixing shit, both your own and your clients’. You correct the wayward run-on sentence, coax life into a line that has fallen flat. You erect strings of lights and whirring pinwheels around those “must keep” thoughts and direct the viewer and potential customer to the irresistible attraction of…whatever it is. Absolutely I right copy for a living. Believe it.

Possible misconception #3 – Copywriting has to do with copyright law.

Yes.

This most common assumption comes from the confusion between the homonyms, but I’m no longer going to correct you. If I do my job right, my client will have a tagline, mission statement, or brand name that’s so unique and outstanding, they’ll have to get that shit protected by law. So, yeah, kinda. I am a copywriter whose work hopefully leads to copyrighting, though technically you probably mean trademarking.

A copyright is the set of exclusive rights given to the creator of an original work. The rights allow this author to copy, distribute, and change the work as they see fit. Often this pertains to movies, albums, illustrations like maps and charts, photographs and artwork, choreography and architecture, and, of course, books. A trademark is an indicator of ownership, usually for a name, logo, slogan, design, and/or image, in order to express that these elements are registered as pertaining to a specific source.

Now while explaining the legal ramifications and distinctions between the two would cause my ignorance to do full-frontal, I’ll suffice it to say that, yep, I’m a copyrighter. I’ll just let it slide in my head by reciting the term “intellectual property” like a mantra, and by letting the person believe that I wear skirt suits and have added the fancy-pants title of Esq. to my last name.

Possible misconception #4 – Copywriters are witches.

But of fucking course we are.

This would be the belief if the person heard copy riting.

One of the definitions of the word “rite“ relates to process art, which is the view and creative philosophy that the results of art aren’t the main goal. The objective is the process, and therefore the procedure, or the rite, is the sole purpose of the art itself. It’s like the saying that’s often taught to men about female orgasm: it’s all about the journey, not the destination. And while the words are undoubtedly the goal and ultimate outcome of copywriting, it takes a hell of a lot of process to get there, usually. So, yes, I’m a copy riter, too.

All of these possible misconceptions and their justification in my head might seem silly to you, but trust me, try being a fry cook and having everyone you encounter believe that you boil actual chefs in hot oil for a living. You’d get tired of it. You’d grow exhausted of defining your job, and watching the luster in a stranger’s eyes dull to a glazed sheen. You’d find a way to either quit your gig and become something simple and self-explanatory, like a FedEx pilot or a lion tamer or a ballerina. Or you’d figure out how to slip the head of a kitchen staff into a vat of sizzling pork fat.

I’ll conclude with the infinite apology.

This past week I had another “Flavor of the Week” column run in the New York Press. It was about the perils of online dating and how I only realized way too late that I wasn’t doing it with the hope of actually meeting somebody awesome. Somehow or another – subconsciously, counter-intuitively – I was looking for quite the opposite. So I wrote about it. And this is how I’ve learned the unfortunate lesson that, if you’re a non-fiction writer, you’re likely to battle guilt with every minor success.

I wanted to write a post about the responsibility that comes with non-fiction, about how I feel that other people become collateral for my writing, but the whole thing came across as so self-aggrandizing and myopic that I scrapped it.

That said, I’m sorry. I have to be, at least a little bit. To the seven or so individuals who went out on dates with me, I’m sorry that you became word fodder, though I’m sure my impression was equally as flawed. And I apologize to my ex. For what it’s worth, three years together amounted in the good sense that real relationships flourish in the world, that stupid, yet honest, one outside of the Internet.

So I wrote about getting pictures of penises on my cellphone.  And it was published in the New York Press, which was a like a whole new set of markers for my ego to huff. It wasn’t until after I submitted my revisions to the editor that it dawned on me: these things actually happened. Which means that this article could potentially embarrass some people. Granted, people who get embarrassed about being namelessly alluded to in sex columns are probably not the same people who brazenly take photographs of their genitals with their cell-phones. At least I hope not.

But an interesting point arose as a result of this article. (Pun definitely intended.) Does an author have a responsibility to conceal identities or alter situations, all for the sake of preventing hurt feelings and lawsuits? It’s certainly not a requirement, and even if select details are changed, that sure as hell doesn’t prevent litigation. Just look at one of my favorites, Augusten Burroughs.  "Undisclosed sum" is not a phrase anybody wants to be on the paying end of.  The introductions to many books contain tiny disclaimers about names being changed or timelines being shuffled. It’s safe to say that nobody wants to be compared to James Frey in that respect, either. Separate from potential legal ramifications, and other than the writer making their own excrement smell like lavender, should other parties be taken into account when writing personal narrative?

I have a friend who went on a date soon after his arrival in New York at the request of an associate. This friend had suggested that he go out for a night on the town with a pretty fashion blogger who lived in Brooklyn. The night went swimmingly, drinks were had, food consumed, and my friend, the Manhattan newbie, was stunned by the wit, grace, and charm of the lady writer. At the end of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, my friend parted ways with the woman, putting her in a cab, and sending her from the final watering hole they had closed out back to her pad in the county of Kings. He was a gentleman, and although he had wanted to rendez-vous in the carnal sense, he knew better than to go that fast, especially since she seemed like multiple-date material.

About two hours later, just shy of five in the morning, his phone rings. The female blogger has a leak in her apartment, everything she owns has been destroyed! She is sobbing. He is the only person who she knows is awake. She asks him to come over and console her. He refuses, as he has just begun a tipsy descent into dreamland on the Upper East Side. Without inviting her over, and without much more than a sincere apology and a promise to call her tomorrow, he hangs up. The next morning his  full name is featured on her well-trafficked blog, along with the question, "Whatever Happened To Chivalry?"

And such is the double-edged sword of first-person writing, especially in the age of new media. To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, we will make weapons of our imperfections. And it seems like some of us will skewer you on those weapons if we so choose.

I wrote the New York Press piece because I found the situation hilarious, if a little creepy, not because I was feeling vindictive. Early in this blog’s nascent I chronicled how I wished I were a sex columnist and how I didn’t know how to go about doing that. Well, if having strangers send me their queries for queer advice can’t happen, I can do the next best thing, which is writing about the bizarre situations that I’ve encountered when it comes to dating, sex, and exploring my twenties. There are a handful of places that look for  humorous, smut-oriented, first person accounts, and they’re much more versatile when it comes to the portfolio.

But what of the exhibitionists who entrusted me with their penises? Shouldn’t they have a say? Most of my nearest and dearest could easily figure out who is who from the subtle hints (their profession, their location, the mention of a double-chin,) is that really fair? My answer is, in this case, yes. I could go on a long schpeel about how writers, musicians, artists, etc. all are influenced by the people they encounter and the experiences that they stumble through, how artistic integrity is a direct relation of subjectivity. And I would be a pretentious cunt. The heart of the matter is this: I wrote what was true because it was easier than struggling to come up with fictional identities.

What if I wrote that Simon was  Trent Reznor,’s doppelganger, with a knack for needlepoint, and a penchant for new-wave music and Dep hair gel. None of this is true, yet all of it is attractive to me. (Sorta.) But coming up with all of that, and keeping it consistent, would require me to step outside of whatever account I was recalling, and add a layer of distance between my writing and what I was trying to convey.  I mean it in the best of ways when I say that when I’m writing non-fiction, I have to forget about the way anybody might feel. It’s an exercise in selfishness, but it’s the only way I can keep the words coming and not slip into neurotic self-talk. I want everyone to like me. Every day I have to grapple with the fact that not everybody will. But maybe one day I’ll get the perfect hair-cut and all of that will change. Until then, I shoot from the fingers first, ask questions later, and accept the fact that there might be consequences by way of yelling or keys kissing the paint of my car.

When I read personal narrative or non-fiction,  I hope that I am being brought into a world that the author wants me to be present in, the same way that I want to suspend my disbelief every time I hear a fish story in my uncle’s garage. Of course I don’t expect everything to be sworn on a Bible, but I do want the integrity of the one recounting the tale to be giving me the best blow-by-blow that they can. For me personally, protecting the innocent, or in this case, the not so innocent, would be disingenuous and hurt my writing. So I didn’t even think about doing it, and when confronted with the possibility that my article might make someone upset, I took the somewhat dick-nozzley approach of, "Well, oops. Too late."

At times I want to write about certain things that I just know better than to confront. Either the story will hurt a friend, shame my family, or cause distress in some way or another. Those stories, no matter how scintillating and funny, I don’t write. It’s not a sacrifice, it’s just good juju. In a case like this, however, it’s a very different nut to crack. (Intended. Again.) I figure that if someone puts themselves in a position so ridiculous as to be offensive — supporting Sarah Palin, reneging on a payment, sending me an unsolicited photograph of their penis — I have a right to string them up with words. Half of humor is the oh shit factor. But I’m still convinced that writers have to take into account that sometimes, even with the best intentions, those closest to the page are bound to get burned. After all, we’re all a little self-obsessed. (Who hasn’t Googled themselves yet?) Looking for your likeness in the art of a companion is only human, I think. So maybe it’s just a little reminder for me not to do anything too stupid, lest I wind up being flogged, or blogged, into shame.

The following post was a result of meeting one of my favorite authors, Stephen Elliott. His new book, The Adderall Diaries, is due to be released September, 2009. If you haven’t read Happy Baby, or his collection of stories My Girlfriend Comes To The City And Beats Me Up, get on it. Seriously. He crafts aggressively good prose.

I could say that I started writing this blog as a result of losing my job. I could write that I was fired on a street corner that faced a homeless shelter and rehab clinic. I could write about how I left the scene of the firing to attend an AA meeting and then returned to the office to collect my things. About how I advised my former boss that the next time he decides to fire an employee he should do it on a Friday so he would get a full week’s worth of work out of them first. It had been his first firing. I could write all of this and it would be true.

When the country was riveted by the James Frey debacle, when some gathered pitchforks to run him out of the publishing world while others still lavished praise, I was just confused. Did it matter if all of his story was true? Any of it? The answer comes down to semantics. You can’t sell a memoir as memoir if it’s fiction. And I think it’s at that point of mislabeling that lawyers get involved.

There is truth in every story. It might not necessarily be the author’s. It might not be identifiable, there may only be history in a glimmer of detail. I’m fascinated by the seam where truth and fabrication meet. I crave knowing how to tackle non-fiction in a way that keeps the writer and reader both entertained and suspending disbelief. I certainly don’t want to write about something that bores me. I’m not going to dedicate a post to chemistry teachers or to accountants (sorry), although I’m sure there are facets of each occupation that are mind-blowing. I want to write about my experiences, and my opinions on certain topics, not only because I think I’m special, but because I believe I can show how special I am in a way that’s interesting to read.

Stephen Elliott wrote a book called Happy Baby that was put out by McSweeney’s a few years ago. The copy I got from the library was hard-cover and had a cool inlay on the front. I put it on my floor next to my bed and thought of reading it, if I got to it. I had a lot of things to do.

“I have that book,” Simon said when he saw it. “It was a hard read.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s just hard. It’s intense. It was good, though,” he said.

I picked up the book. I read it over the course of the next two days. I was glued to it. I didn’t want it to end.

When autobiography and fiction dance well together it feels effortless to the reader. For me, personally, I’m aware that the writer of fiction must have some familiarity with their material, may it be the location, the characters, or the circumstances. For me, reading Happy Baby felt like the author set their life into a narrative, dressed their associates in different clothes, and watched how things could have been, and sort of were.

I assume that people read Happy Baby because it is such a tough read. Much of Stephen Elliott’s work focuses on particular themes, including the foster care system, abuse, ]aimlessness, and, of course, kinky sex. Much of it the author admits is true, in fact, in his later book of stories, My Girlfriend Comes To The City And Beats Me Up, he disclaims that some of the stories are fiction, but all of the sex is fact. As he says at the end of the introduction, “This is not a memoir, but it’s damn close. And I’m OK with that. And I’m OK with you knowing that.” Reading about a character’s vulnerability and knowing it’s the author’s vulnerability somehow makes the work transcend both fiction and memoir. For a writer, to convey traumatic personal experience through narrative well requires an inherent sense of tact and a level of self-awareness that can only be rivaled by monks and psychiatrists.

Lately I was beginning to doubt my abilities, and I was starting to feel the shadow of writers’ block stretching across my keyboard, so I wrote to Stephen asking how he did it. I wanted to know everything. I felt like sending myself to his office in San Francisco in the form of a hologram like Princess Leia. Help me, Stephen Elliott, you are my only hope.

Fortunately he was heading to Portland for the visiting authors series at Reed College, and he was generous enough to offer me an hour of his time as well as a copy of his essay “Why I Write,” parts of which are quoted here. We shot the shit at a Portland geek hangout filled with vegan food and gamers. It‘s important to say that Stephen Elliott does not come across as a sissy. You can read about him being tied up, abused, and broken down, but in person he‘s exceedingly confident, articulate and charming. Separate from a total fangirl crush, here’s a bit of what I left with.

After all I have heard about getting an agent or pushing your manuscript, there is apparently a lot of value in the slush pile as far as Stephen is concerned. (The slush pile for you newbies is a collection of unsolicited manuscripts.) That was how Happy Baby was discovered. If your manuscript is solid enough and you submit it to the slush pile, anyone who takes the time to read it will see that you are a talented undiscovered writer, which can make you a hidden goldmine. When I asked Stephen later on about the Stegner Fellowship that he had been awarded, and if he thought that was a decent method of entering the field, his response repeated the point. “Fellowships aren’t the way to get published. Submit to literary journals, there are a lot of them out there, in the slush pile.”

Stephen insists that to get published it isn’t the usual Hollywood “not what you do but who you know” scenario, you don’t need to know anybody.

“For short stories and personal essays and poems in particular, just write and send them. Sometimes writers spend all their energy pitching articles and don’t write anything, as if they’re waiting for permission. By the time the editor responds the writer might not even want to write the article anymore. There are many publications that are only great because they take the slush pile seriously. And agents read those journals, often finding their clients.”

So, obviously, after being discovered, skyrocketing into popularity, and receiving glowing reviews, it all comes down to money, right? Wrong.

“No one is paying me to write what they want me to,” he says. For him it’s all about perfecting the craft, being a tireless editor, and creating. It’s gone beyond the original call that most of us have — to communicate — and has become his method of processing.

“It’s about knowing myself, working through issues, understanding who I am in relation to the world around me. When I’m at my best I don’t know where I’m going. Writing is an exploration…I still write to communicate, which as I get older is less about screaming and more about connecting, though it’s about screaming too.”

He insists that his goal is simply to make a great book. “Only great books stick around,” he says, and it dawns on me that everything, from recording history with words to the actual art of writing itself, comes down to permanence. We all want to be invincible. Our memories, the ones that plague us and haunt us in nightmares and behavior patterns, they’re already living on indefinitely, like invisible, nostalgic vampires. By writing about them we make them more real and yet, somehow, less frightening.

“If a writer is offered ten thousand to publish a perfect book, or twenty thousand for just an all right book, they’re going to choose twenty. It’s all about the money. But if you ask them to remember why they started writing, that’s the way to present it. It’s about writing a perfect book,” he concludes.

I didn’t point out that I have twelve dollars in my bank account.

I ask Stephen if he minds getting pigeon holed as “the writer who writes about kinky sex.” He laughs and tells me that he gets asked that a lot, and then he says no. The only person who can force him to be characterized a certain way is himself. Again, it comes down to the simple fact that he writes what he wants to write. What the world and his critics do with that isn’t really his business.

I ask my burning question: is becoming a stripper a good or bad career move for a writer? I’ve been fascinated with the idea of tossing my five foot tall, flat-chested frame into the ring of Portland’s thriving strip club culture for quite some time now, I’ve written about it extensively on this blog. I’ve wondered if that sort of a jarring experience would help or hurt my craft. Stephen had been an exotic dancer at one point, calling it his “stripper year,” though it had been a sort of occupational hazard of being a full-time heroin user. Considering the myriad of stories he’s written, and the way he relays the experience, I figure it can’t make my writing suffer. Besides, I’d offer pictures.

“Never do something thinking that you can write about it later. That shouldn’t be the reason why you do something,” he says. I feel like a kid who asked their parents a dumb question. “Think of writing as a hobby. Think of it as a really fun thing you do. Don’t rely on it as a way to make a living,” he adds. Too late. Moving on, I turn the conversation to his new book, a mix of true crime and memoir called The Adderall Diaries, due out from Greywolf Press next fall.

“This is the best book I’ve written. So far,” he says. He seems genuinely excited, and relays the tale of Hans Reiser, the famous computer programmer accused of slaying his wife. There were resulting false murder confessions that led to Stephen’s personal detective work, ties to criminals, and the progressively difficult relationship that he has with his father, who also confessed to a murder. It sounds intense and intensely personal. The following night when I hear him read two sections of the book at Reed College, my curiosity is roused. It’s the unmistakable voice of the author, recalling sublimely devastating situations with tact and raw emotion. I want to do that.

The reason why I was compelled to write to Stephen in the first place is because sometimes I feel like giving up. It becomes difficult to struggle, to not know if I’m going to make rent, to revisit the articles or stories that I’ve written and be thrown, eyeballs-first, into a pit of writing self-loathing. I asked if he ever thinks about giving up.

“Why would I give it up?” he smiles. From a man who writes from the gut, that’s what I needed to hear. There’s no reason to, so long as I’m writing what I want to write, I’m doing far more than just surviving.

Photograph of the author Stephen Elliott by Lydia Lunch

You can purchase Stephen Elliott’s other books on Amazon, or read some of his work including An Oral History Of Myself on his personal site StephenElliott.com. If any of you are familiar with his work and would like to start a Teen Beat style fan club, write me: AinsleyDrew at gmail dot com. Understand that I’m the president, you can be the treasurer.

Regular, whiny Jerk Ethic will be back in action by the end of the week. I figured I’d spice things up this time with an interview and some personal narrative.