I write all sorts of things for the paper, but a lot of what I do is ad copy. Stuff like this, advertising their new Entertainment & The Arts section. Today my boss Joni invited me to attend a meeting with the “client,” who in this case is the marketing person for the newsroom. Joni invited me to the meeting, but warned me that, since the newsroom people are all former journalists, sometimes they’re very very picky about copy. She cautioned me not to take it personally.

So, in we went to the Wedgewood Conference Room (affectionately called “The Wedgie,” much to my amusement), and I present the ad and try to sell the copy I’ve written. I’m wondering if they’ll get the slightly dirty double entendre in the headline, but I focus on the active voice (FIND the cure, LOOK for our newest section, GET inspired, etc), and highlight the one section my boss had identified as iffy: “Oh, and hear that? That’s the pulse of pop culture.” It’s distinctly Ariel, and my boss and I were both unsure if it was going to fly.

“Looks great,” the client said, adding that she especially loved the pulse of pop culture part. She asked me to add a few extra descriptives, and that was that.

Afterwards, my boss strolled past my cubical and gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up, big smile, and grinned, “that went great!”

These are the little things that I missed in my many many months of unemployment.