Ah, copywriting. Who could imagine a better occupation than writing about some of the loveliest hotels in the world? Imagine yourself languishing in elegantly furnished hotel rooms of Victorian Grande Dames set in the lush forests of exotic islands. When I work, I picture endless white beaches that stretch out to eternity, framed by magnificent sheer cliffs and sparkling azure waters and palm trees. What could be easier than writing about luxurious international hotels whose names roll off the tongue like champagne and caviar?

Now imagine being asked to write about one hundred of these gems without using the words “elegant”, “lush”, “exotic”, “white”, magnificent”, “azure”, and “luxurious”. Not so easy anymore is it?

Thesaurus.com is a wonderful website but at the same time being a completely useless one. Take the word “beautiful” as an example. Type in the word “beautiful” and it gives you fifty synonyms of the word in the context that I need it and twenty of them are unusable. I can hardly describe a five-star hotel in New York as “nice” or “pulchritudinous” now can I? Yet I go back, time after time, with the vain hope that this time, I will find that elusive synonym that has evaded capture for my last forty attempts.
If you scroll down you find more interesting synonyms of the word, in their various contexts. In one case, the word “stacked” is an actual synonym for “beautiful”, as is “piece” and “hopped up”. None of this helps me in the least except to shorten my ever-looming deadline after my curiosity has yet again spurred my navigation ever onward.

Copywriting is a great job even when it does seem like the synonyms are winning. After all, I get to take a holiday to wherever I want to go every time that I sit down to work.