I get 80% of my business from graphic designers. I’ve worked with many of the design firms in the city. I’ll tell you one thing, if you piss off someone once, auf wiedersehen. You’re not an employee, so interfere with their ego and you won’t be coming back.

This is one thing I dislike about the industry. It lowers the quality of the work. I started in the ad business and every great writer I ever worked with was a huge part of a powerful campaign. Good writing makes all the difference, and most design firms recognize this.

Once I was late for a kick-off meeting with a new design firm and client. It was a particularly bad time in my life. I had a 12 month-old child who I was still figuring out (translation: silly brain soup from sleep deprivation), my mother was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer and my mother-in-law was selling the ancestral homeland, an inspiring slice of waterfront property I’d called home for eight years.

So I’m late for a meeting because I totally forget that it started at noon. I don’t leave my house until 11:30 and it takes an hour to get there. I call from the road and inform them that I’m going to be late. I get to the meeting and it’s awkward but I get the gist of the project and have the opportunity to ask my questions. End of meeting and everything seems okay. But the relationship between moi and the account manager is sour from the get go.

Through the grapevine I learn that the account manager and others at the design firm feel that I did not appropriately apologize for being late. The chemical reaction fizzles, and I get very few future jobs from this group, despite that the client picked my campaign direction and that the brainstorming sessions were some of the most inspired I’ve worked on, and that I cheerfully revised the copy six times. I kept thinking that my creativity and hard work would override the initial guffaw.

I understand that’s how this industry works but it underscores a harsh reality of freelance copywriting. You are disposable. It doesn’t matter if your ideas are the one the client picks. Or if you’ve got four sellable ideas to your design partner’s one. Or if the client loves you. You’re screwed if you don’t kiss ass enough.

Not since Mr. Flint’s ninth-grade course has chemistry meant so much to me. This is not a torrid crush and intense memorization of the table of elements made in an effort to impress. This is stuff of alchemy.

At 1:15PM PST, Motive Design Research closed their doors. I am sad because that chemistry experiment is over.

I worked with this design firm since day one. For eight years, I watched them hire designers, fire designers, add a partner, get bigger, produce amazingly fresh work, downsize due to the tech bust and struggle to bring in new clients. And I just watched them close their doors for good.

They are responsible for the most beautiful, thoughtful and well-designed samples in my book. One partner went to Starbucks. The other is at a prominent design firm. I am still here, working from the top floor of my house, trying to figure out how I’m going to replace the Motive revenue stream. More importantly, will I have that type of creative chemistry again?

Guten tag. This blog begins with a rationale for why I dislike overwrought bios. I hate to write about myself in the third person. I’d rather show you how I write and let you decide if we’re a suitable match. Nevertheless, you need to understand that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to copywriting. So here’s my story.

I’m a classic A-type, Taurus go-getter. When I was three, my mom came to pick me up from day care. When she walked in the room, she saw all the other little people sitting in a circle around me. I was reading to them.

When I was 17, I started working at Dahlin Smith White Advertising (which is now EuroRSCG 4D) as a runner and receptionist. I worked there through college, often full time, while still managing to graduate in three years with a 3.7 GPA in English Literature. I opportunistically crammed in a summer abroad in Germany, under the hopes that I could eventually learn to speak the language so well that I could get a job there in publishing. Alas, I spent too much time in the beer gardens perfecting my hand-to-bier-stein hoist rather than my umlaut inflections. Although my pronunciation improved with the number of steins partook, I did not become fluent in the language. This was a momentary weakness in my otherwise go-getter-ness.

While at DSW, I soaked up the beginning of the mass computer revolution. I witnessed the development and unveiling of the Intel Inside campaign, and worked under the brains who branded Intel. I knew all the media reps. I read every InfoWorld, Business Week and Forbes for two years searching and marking Intel ads. I ran the media library like an Aryan schoolmarm, scolding anyone who did not return materials in a timely manner. I wrote competitive analysis after competitive analysis about various companies and industries.

Then I quit to work at a mortgage company. In hindsight I can see that this not a wise career path, but I was young and naive. I don’t normally talk about this time period because I took this job for love, a very ill conceived move. My boyfriend at the time convinced me that I would make a good mortgage broker and we could cash in on the refinancing boom. What was I thinking?!? I got an A on a college paper entitled, “The Phantasmagoria of Allusion and Illusion in James Joyce’s Ulysses”. Did I really think that mortgage banking would do it for me? I quit four months later and decided to go to grad school.

Meanwhile I applied to work at the library. I didn’t get the job because when asked about how I would handle the tedium of re-shelving books I replied, “I have an active fantasy life.” So I studied for the GRE, read a lot of books and watched bad TV.

Then Jon White called. I am incredibly grateful to Jon White, DSW Creative Director. I remember vividly where I was when he called and asked me to come and write for DSW. I was sitting on my couch watching Beverly Hills 90210 re-runs. I had no clue what I was going to do with my life after yet another dismal experience with standardized tests.

So I started writing. Eleven years later, here I am.