Tuesday, June 12, 2012

There was a single peal of thunder just now, followed by silence, which I’m going to interpret as a sign to knock out tonight’s blog post and stop checking TheOnion.com. If the power really were to go out, taking Microsoft Word and all its letters with it, that would mean no blog post, a horrific turn of events because I wanted to raise the topic of copywriting tonight.

We’ve been there before. More than a year later, I can still confidently say I don’t enjoy it. But that doesn’t mean necessity hasn’t called for it, and accordingly I’ve sought to parlay responsibility into much more agreeable terms: skill acquisition, specifically the ability to write under real deadlines.

The most useful aid I’ve found? Ritual. Whenever a due date nears, I find myself cracking open Notepad, time and time again, and free typing. I never use WordPad, with its fancy toolbar and decadent font sizes. Notepad is my ride-or-die app. There’s a stark beauty to it. No spell check. No margins. Just a wide, white expanse as unnerving as the paper it seeks to simulate. It’s my modern-day typewriter.