Copywriter for sale

Doree Shafrir said it. The world of magazine writing is officially over and harder than ever to break into.

So that’s it? There’s no hope for the wannabes, the hacks, or the idealists? The romantic dream of becoming a writer for a prestigious New York magazines is yesterday’s news? (Yes, pun intended. As a disgruntled writer, it’s all I’ve got.) I refuse to believe this libel propaganda. I refuse to believe that a small misstep down the advertising path deems me a career hopelessly writing headlines for banner ads and sign off copy for the rest of my life–or at least until I’m forty which, in my opinion, is when it’s all over. No one wants a 40-year-old blogger. (Do I hear a new Steve Carell sequel?)

There has to be more. Everyone comes to New York to chase a dream, so they say. Sometimes that dream takes on a different form due to compromises made on behalf of the city’s extreme real estate conditions, but there’s still a way of keeping it alive. Or is that a naïve, sophomore New Yorker talking? Because it’s true, I’ve met the wannabes, the hacks and the idealists. I’ve seen them for my very eyes. Hell, I’m one of them. Plugging away at a friends-only-fan-based blog every day in hopes the eyes of an editor from the Times happen to fall on it (and in love with it.) The countless stories submitted with only a rejection letter to show for it. It’s tough work, these word jobs. If talk is cheap, than writing is poverty stricken. Which I guess is nothing new or else the cliché of a dark, musty studio apartment in the West Village containing only a typewriter and canned beans wouldn’t exist.

I just refuse to believe that success in this industry lies only in the ability to draw Chlamydia drips off celebrity genitalia, or a really large trust fund tiding you over while you beat away at the keyboard for $2 an adverb.

I’m not asking for the world. I’m asking for a byline. And if that byline somehow unfolds into a 2500 square foot loft in Soho and a life fully realized only then I will have officially run out of words.

The New York Observer article by Doree Shafrir, herself.