Making A Masterpiece (And Writing About It)

Lately I’ve been doing a lot more copywriting, meaning “sponsored” copy, or advertising, as opposed to editorial writing. I enjoy copywriting because it’s a nice change of pace — trying to figure out what the client wants to say, as opposed to figuring out what I want to say, is fun. And I’m also proud to follow in the footsteps of my parents, both of whom were copywriters. My mother, a freelancer who worked from home from the time I was a toddler until she retired, taught me about the magic of afternoon naps. I find it a key component of being a successful writer; it’s hard to compose anything decent when you’re feeling all sluggish post-lunch. A quick 20-30 minutes of shut-eye gets your head right back in the game. Thanks, Mom!

Quite often I have to write copy about products I haven’t experienced firsthand, whether it’s stereo equipment I’ve never heard or potato chips I haven’t tasted. But sometimes I get lucky, and get asked to write copy for a brand that I actively like and have written about editorially. That happened last month, when I got to craft a lot of verbiage for The Dalmore’s “Making A Masterpiece” advertorial in Robb Report. It’s a brand I drink voluntarily and regularly, and as an added bonus I got to sip some with Flavien Desoblin at his bar, the legendary Brandy Library. We’d met up so I could interview him for the Dalmore piece, but we wound up mostly kibitzing about the whisky industry and various people in it, while tasting the Dalmore’s Cigar Malt and King Alexander III expressions. It was a ridiculously fun afternoon, and fortunately there were enough nuggets in our hour-plus gabfest to use in the final ad/article.

If you didn’t click the link above, here it is again. Even if you don’t feel like reading a couple thousand words of glorified ad copy, you should have a look at the visuals, which I think are really stunning. And they might just inspire you to read some of it, too.