Writing vs Copywriting - Hicks Style

Thursday 29 December 2011

I've been looking online at a few sites like Elance lately to scan the freelance writing gigs available on there. Many writers say that because of the competition, you must be prepared to write for many different forms, including copywriting.  Indeed, people make VERY good money copywriting.  Advertising has always suckled writers, a creative avenue for them to earn a living moving words around so that they can be well-fed enough to be able to work on their novels.  Many writers do this.  It is completely and utterly acceptable to do this.  And yet, for me, looking at these sorts of writing jobs on Elance and thinking about doing this sort of work feels rather like attaching a giant vacuum cleaner to the bottom of my feet and letting it suck my eyeballs out through my soles.

So I guess copywriting isn't really the bag for me, right?  But idealism is a high-priced commodity these days when we're all for sale.  Sometimes I think that one day not so soon we will begin to feel bereft whenever we read anything that is not trying to sell us something because we've become so conditioned.  Sometimes, I can feel myself beginning to dwindle, looking at the shrunken writing market and the giant mass of people who wish to compete in it, and my low self-confidence blobs me forward an infinitesmal nanostep towards the landslide that will tip me down into one day thinking, "Well, come on.  Why not write copy for Lockheed Martin?  They're just providing a service like everybody else."

But I really don't think so.  Because, folks, when it comes to black and white thinking about this stuff, my view is a little Bill Hicksian: 


I wonder what Bill would have thought of the developments in the world today 20 years on if he had survived the cancer that felled him in the mid-90's.  I watched a documentary about him the other day, and followed it up last night watching one of his routines.  He was high-octane, passionate, visionary, a little scary ... and bloody brilliant :)

Oh, to live in a world that is not fuelled by marketeers.  They do not understand highest common denominators.  Beauty.  Rhythm.  The natural world.  Those are what will keep us from drowning in our own plastic.


5 comments

  1. I can't help smiling broadly at that clip, Sue. I've rarely heard anyone tell it like it is as he did (George Carlin?). And he was hardly exaggerating either... except maybe for the arsenic baby food:) Whatever you end up doing, I hope I continue to read what you write, 'cos I enjoy it immensely. It's genuine organic, free range, renewable,  plastic-free prose. It's probably fashioned from hemp fibre too... great market in that;)

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  2. Hey, Harry.

    Yeah, he really was so good at telling it like it was and it makes me smile too because when I see things like this, it's like they throw us back in touch with beautiful reality, as if a bucket of cold water has been poured over our heads :)

    Thanks so much for the encouragement.  I really, really appreciate it :)  

    The hemp fibre I'd be inclined to wear these days where once I would have smoked it :)

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  3. Hey, Harry.

    Yeah, he really was so good at telling it like it was and it makes me smile too because when I see things like this, it's like they throw us back in touch with beautiful reality, as if a bucket of cold water has been poured over our heads :)

    Thanks so much for the encouragement.  I really, really appreciate it :)  

    The hemp fibre I'd be inclined to wear these days where once I would have smoked it :)

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  4. Advertising's basic purpose is to persuade us to buy something we don't really need and often can't really afford, and it's often intrusive. As another of your posts says, advertising IS noise pollution!

    You excel at what you do - I've just had a quick scan through your 'back catalogue', which confirms that for me. And the smoking seems to have enhanced your abilities;)

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