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Good copywriting practice:
I created an email account for my son.
He doesn’t use it.
He’s a baby.
I use it.
I send him messages, notes, pictures. I tell him where we went and what we did. I talk to him about his mother. Sometimes, I give him advice, lessons learned from my own missteps, my own mistakes. I share little moments.
Once I wrote:
Beau—
We went to a lake house last weekend. Me and you and Mama. Brendan and Carly were there, too. Chris and Carolyn were there, too.
We had dinner at the big table, and you sat between me and Mom in your booster seat. You ate Cheerios and looked around at the people. Sometimes you were very serious, and sometimes you babbled and smiled, and the people saw your teeth, the bottom two.
“Oh my gosh, he’s such a charmer,” Carolyn said. “He’s so sweet and calm.”
I put another Cheerio in your mouth. You took it and smiled, and everybody clapped. You smiled bigger. The people clapped louder. I gave you another.
Pride is such a hard feeling to describe. It feels like you could cry.
ok.
~ Dad
P.S. I like this picture of you and me and the buffalo:
Beau, me, and the buffalo.
I used to free-write in the mornings to warm up my brain.
Whatever came up came out. I didn’t have an audience in mind. There was no face or personality in my head as I wrote. Now, I give myself fifteen minutes and I write to Beau. I give him something. And he gives me something in return. I still write about whatever comes to mind, except now I write around him, bending and shaping the anecdotes, the happenings, the little things—the moments—for Beau. I see his face when I write.
“Write to please just one person,” said Kurt Vonnegut. He was a novelist.
But copywriters say this, too: “Never write for anyone; always write for someone.”
And since replacing my free-writing with Beau-writing, I’ve noticed a difference in how I compose copy. Writing for someone has become more automatic, more intuitive. It just happens. I don’t really think about it anymore.
I wasn’t anticipating this.
I just wanted to write to my son each day, for him.
Turns out it’s good copywriting practice to consistently write something,
anything,
for someone,
anyone,
you love.
