My training in copywriting started many years ago through AWAI (American Writers and Artists, Inc). It continued with copywriting legend, Dan Kennedy, from whom I received certification as a “Dan Kennedy Certified Copywriter for Info-Marketers”. But I wanted to be a writer long before I ever heard of AWAI, Dan Kennedy or even copywriting.
Actually, that’s not exactly true. I wanted to be a storyteller, like my dad. He never made it past the eighth grade, but he could captivate a room with his stories. Didn’t matter if you’d heard them a dozen times, or whether he was telling about riding freight trains during the Depression or having a cup of coffee at a diner, you couldn’t help getting caught up in them. I wanted to do that! Sadly, that gene didn’t quite make the transition.
The good news, though, was that I discovered that I could write stories. My career began at the age of 10 when I wrote my first novel in serial format. I used my classmates as the characters in what could today be turned into a reality TV program. It may not have been a Pulitzer Prize effort but it was very popular and each installment was snatched and passed around as soon as it emerged from my #2 pencil. Naturally, I was hooked.
It took a lot of years and a wide range of experiences before finding my way to copywriting. I started graduate school a couple times, once with the goal of teaching math and the other to be a veterinarian. There was a brief (but still entirely too long) stint in military intelligence. I worked in and managed restaurants, high-rise office buildings and hotels. I co-owned a landscape business in New Orleans and still do some work with my website design company in Charleston. My all-time favorite job was living and working on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. An incredible experience! But that’s another story…
I fell in love with copywriting because it gives me the opportunity to write and actually make a living while doing it. And it gives me a chance to tell stories, which is what copywriting is really all about — telling the story of a person, brand or product in a way that touches something in a potential customer. How great is that?
