The Shithouse Poet

One of the jobs of a copywriter is to find exactly the perfect words to describe what you’re talking about. Revision after revision, you rewrite, hone and whittle the copy down to turn the precise, interesting phrase to perfectly describe your subject.

When you get there, you know it instantly.

And when someone else comes up with it, you know that too.

I have a writer friend of mine I’ve known coming up on twenty years. He’s a writer of some renown in the business, and we’ve worked together as well as crossed paths at a number of agencies over the years.

This one agency we worked at decided to bring in a creative director to bolster its creative chops. So they brought in a guy originally from one of the big cities in California. I won’t say which one.

But it’s known for, among other things, sourdough bread, a bridge and cable cars.

Anyway, this creative director fancied himself a renaissance writer. He'd made his reputation with two big successes: drinking before eight in the morning every day of his life, and making sure no one he ever worked with in that California city remembers him in a vertical position.

I kid. I kid because I love.

Actually the award-winning, nationally recognized work he did for a sparkling water account and, at the time, a brand new car company is where he made his mark. He had a folksy style he thought was appropriate regardless of the account he was working on.

He also had a deep baritone voice he decided would be the voiceover for all the radio and tv we were doing on every account.

Someone thought very highly of himself.

I was talking to my writer friend one day about this creative director, and my friend called him the "shithouse poet."

I was crying I was laughing so hard. It. Was. Perfect. In two exacting words, he'd captured the essence of who this guy had been, was and would always be.

I'm still in awe of it.

Sometimes, out of nowhere, the phrase pops into my head. And when it does, it brings me as much joy as the first time my friend said it.

Sparkling water, cars or anything else, I'm pretty sure the shithouse poet never described anything so perfectly.