Day 21: Premature
A few days ago I had a conversation with my boss — a copywriter who generated more than $50 million for our company last year.
He has a sharp business mind, and a lethal ability to sell.
In our line of work, every word we write needs to have a purpose. And the ultimate purpose is to get the reader to buy what we’re selling. Every word leading up to that point either advances that goal or needs to go.
After working for so long as a copywriter, the boundaries between copywriting and other kinds of writing have begun to blur. So I asked him, “Do you ever write without the aim of getting someone to do something?”
I went to an unusual college. All three hundred of us (the combined total of students from Freshman to Senior) studied the same thing: philosophy, history, literature, science, mathematics, language, and music.
We read no textbooks. For science, we read Aristotle, Darwin, Max Planck and Einstein, among others. In math, we read Euclid, Ptolemy, Newton and Lobachevsky. In other classes, Plato, Schopenhauer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Aquinas, Kant, Dostoevsky, Freud. Etc.
We also had no professors. Instead, we had “tutors” who guided our discussions by asking questions only. We were never told what to think, or what conclusions to draw. It was up to us to read deeply and wonder for ourselves.
I thought of those years in college as I talked to my boss about writing. Because in college, we were never trying to “sell” anyone in our writing. In our papers, we were asked to find and pursue an interesting question. Deep wondering, you might call it.
A question, and the curiosity to follow it wherever it might lead.
In copywriting, by contrast, you can never begin without your end in mind. You must always know: what action are you trying to get the reader to take?
In other words, you must always know what you want from the person you’re talking to. It is death to raise “unnecessary” questions in their mind. Because (oh no!) they might not take action!
As I’ve written every day for the past four weeks, I’ve wondered about this a lot. Do I always have to have a point? Do I always have to “teach” something? Do I always need to draw a lesson from the stories I tell?
If I were exploring these same stories only for myself, I wouldn’t be tempted to wrap them up with nice bow ties and conclusions. But since I’m sharing them, I’ve consistently agonized over how to draw some kind of moral from these tales.
In a way, writing to share has made me less sensitive to the truths I’m trying to explore. I comb through my memories with blinders on, on a heat-seeking mission to find “interesting” and “insightful” stories and ideas.
When I sift through my mind this way, what do I miss? What’s the risk of rushing to shape my memories into narratives so that others can read them?
Do I not risk warping my own understanding of myself, because I’m only looking for what other people might want to see? Connecting dots that shouldn’t be connected?
I’ve wanted to be a “coach” for years. I’ve fantasized it and glamorized it, imagining it to be a sort of dream job where I can spend my days helping others reflect on and understand themselves. It is what I have come to believe is my “work” on this earth — even to the point of considering graduate school to become a therapist.
Now I’m realizing that maybe I don’t want this work to be my “work.” Maybe I don’t want it to be a job. Maybe I don’t want to have money depend on it. Maybe I don’t want it in the public eye. Maybe I don’t want to share my stories and wonder if people will “like” or comment on them.
To be truly sensitive in the way I’ve come to understand that word — as open, aware, and perceptive — maybe I need to spend less time looking for stories to tell. Maybe I need to focus first on looking — with no agenda — and let the stories take shape on their own.