The Art of Repetition

In the months after my mother died, we started the task of sorting. It’s a strange process that makes you part curator and part detective. You read every letter in every file, empty every box, open every drawer. We weren’t looking for clues — my mother was remarkably transparent — but I found one anyway. A clue to why I had become a writer.

In a box marked “Jimmy,” I found — among childhood art projects, report cards and letters I had written her — a stack of thank-you notes I had sent her friends. That seemed strange. I had mailed them directly to her friends after my bar mitzvah 40 years ago. Yet here they were. One still had a note attached to my letter that read, “Marcia, just wanted you to see what a beautiful note Jimmy wrote me.”

There were about a dozen of them, the earliest recorded samples of my nonschool writing. I sat down to read the stack and found myself in the company of my 13-year-old self, sincerely thanking people for generous checks, Cross pen sets and books like “The Encyclopedia of Jewish Sports Heroes.” What I saw in those notes was an early writing exercise, one I’m still doing: the practice of saying the same thing over and over again in different ways.

Sabine Dowek

Having opened my share of thank-you notes over the years and having watched my kids write their own, I knew that nonwriters treat the process as an exercise in efficiency. Find a nice way to say something, and then copy and paste. The shorter, the better. Get it done and cross one more name off the list.

My notes to my mother’s friends were each quite long and singular. I didn’t follow a template. Some started with “thank you,” some ended with it. I often used the task at hand, thanking them for the gift, to express something deeper: gratitude for being a part of my family, for putting up with me, for coming to my basketball games. I used anecdotes and details.

To become a writer, you have to follow a few rules: Show, don’t tell. Avoid clichés. Be specific. Try not to repeat yourself.

These rules work for me whether I’m writing an essay like this or an ad at the agency where I work as a writer and creative director. I’ve learned that people don’t love to be told things. But they don’t mind being shown things. When you demonstrate an idea for a reader or viewer, you let him participate in the process.

I try to teach this to the copywriters who work for me. Find the story. Make it matter. No one wants to be lectured to. And that’s true if you’re creating a mobile app, a TV spot or even a PowerPoint.

And the toughest lesson: learn to love doing the same assignment again and again. Writing, like building furniture or making jewelry, is “Groundhog Day.” How many ways can you write a headline that says, “Here’s a dollar off coupon”? The answer turns out to be almost infinite.

A writer brings me 20 taglines. I ask for 50 more. In essence, I’m asking him or her to do what I did as a budding thank-you-note writer: find another angle.

When I was 13, I don’t remember wanting to be a writer. I didn’t particularly love to read. What I loved was praise. And these thank-you notes brought me a lot of that.

Reading them 40 years later, I recalled how my mother’s friends would sometimes write me a note thanking me for my thank-you note. And I also remembered how my mother would ask to read the notes before I stuffed them in the envelope. She would often tell me how good they were. I didn’t grow up without praise, but these were the days before every kid got a trophy just for showing up. And I wasn’t the best student on the block. So my mother’s words, “You’re quite a writer,” meant a lot.

I don’t remember setting out to make those words the truth. I think I became a writer because it was the only thing I could do that made people say, “Wow.” Plus, my words seemed to work on English teachers and also on girls. And that turned out to be powerful fuel.