Thankless

In my past life, I worked in both design and writing. I wrote, and then I made it look pretty. I was both a verbal and visual communicator.

But not anymore. Today, I am a writer. It's a simpler life. It's easy to describe. "I write for a jewelry company" is so much easier to understand than "I write and design for a global chemical company specializing in water treatment and paper process chemicals, including dry and wet strength resins."

I'm a writer. That's it. I come to work, I sit in my darling cubicle, and I write. All day long. I love my job. As you've probably noticed, I like to write. It's a pretty good arrangement, all things considered.

Except for this one little thing: there's no "wow" factor.

As a designer, your work gets noticed. People thank you for making their messages look fantastic. They think you're a magician. They understand the art in what you do. But, since everyone can write at some level, there's no "wow." No one notices your work unless there is something wrong. The highest compliment a writer generally receives is hearing nothing at all.

Some days, that's just hard. We launched our new corporate Web site today, and even though I wrote a whole lot of the text that's out there, it's the designers that are getting the pat on the back. Granted, it looks terrific, and I would never take that away from them. But let's face it - without my words to work with, there's no site.

So I'm gonna take myself to a movie tonight and celebrate the fact that no one complained that the writing was bad. Yay me - I don't suck a lot.