The OG Copywriter Helen Garner | What I leant from Yellow Notebook

Copy | Copywriting | Story Brand | Captions | Origin Stories |

These are all keywords being thrown around today in the marketing industry and on social media platforms. In a day and age that craves authenticity and real stories of lived experience, I have come across someone whom I will dub the ‘OG Copywriter.’ Australian Author Helen Garner.

Full disclosure, I had never heard of Helen Garner before I came across her book Yellow Notebook in the local library when I was looking through the tiny literature section. (I have also never read any of her novels and actually don’t know anything else about her). I picked it up and read a few pages, wasn’t sure if it would bore me as it had no rising crescendo or chapters, but I borrowed it and gave it a fair go.

A fair go?! I couldn’t even cook dinner without picking it up to read ‘one more’ diary entry! It was a glimpse into the mind of an author! It was an honest ‘highlights and LOWlights’ reel from a creative woman’s daily life in the 1980’s! This was epic! It had descriptions of fashion and style that she envied, snippets of dinner party conversations that gave no relevant context, relationship drama that was real and relatable, documentation of dreams, spiritual awakenings and questions, story prompts that flew into her head and current news and crime headlines. Eclectic, interrupted and incredible!

Helen Garner even mentioned the assassination attempt of former American President Ronald Reagan as she saw it on the tv in 1981. She recalled talking about it with a librarian who remembered when Kennedy had been shot. I read this only the week after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and it shook me, the commonalities that we shared throughout time and generations. Someone could be reading this in 40 years’ time!

What I loved the most, aside from being able to laugh and cry with the honesty and hilarious goings-on, was that Helen shared her uncensored self-doubt and her ups and downs as a writer. She shared the words of her critics and her wavering confidence in her ideas and writing. She barely shared any of her accomplishments or praise but bared her soul and eventually allowed us, the readers, an insightful glimpse into her inner struggles.

Through the snorts and giggles, my mind kept racing to compare the Yellow Notebook entries to today’s digital world. I thought about how Helen might have used these snippets of her days to write copy and to relate her stories to her current audience, if she was living these earlier years nowadays. Her diaries are told in such a captivating and short-form way that they would be perfect to weave into Instagram captions and made into reels. They hooked me and drew me right in. I have a lot to learn from them!

Of course, I picked up a blank notebook halfway through reading so that I could start my own version and jot down my life, and when I began to write I realised that I have a lot to say! It’s extremely hard to not copy Helen’s style, as she is such an engaging writer, but the more that I wrote, the more I started to develop my own style. AND the more that I wrote, the more I started to see stories EVERYWHERE!!! If I just open my storytelling eyes…

…the barista from Argentina who is an art therapist recovering from burnout, the checkout operator who made his daughter drink pre-mix gravy because she insisted it was chocolate milk, the homeless lady who told me to stop staring because she “wasn’t a zoo” when I offered her a hot drink, the way my teenager opened the door for me when I was sick, the way my six-year-old called me a ‘vampire mum’ when I tried on red lipstick… Stories are literally streaming out of our world EVERY DAY, EVERYWHERE and we can capture them, jot them down, and weave them into copy or in to NOVELS! Poems, sketches, creative living. We all have stories to tell, and we all WANT TO READ other people's.

So, in conclusion I want to thank Helen Garner for sharing her note-form diaries in such a vulnerable way. We not only have the opportunity to see into the world of the 1980’s, and into the mind of a creative woman, but we also have the blueprints for creating our own stories and then to use them as we will.

I’d LOVE to know if you keep diaries, and if you use them to create art in some form? Or if you will now?

Jessi x