Here is a sentence I would like to never hear again: “My content is not performing.” Whenever I hear this sentence, I instantly picture a very unhappy seal dropping the same ball, again and again.
But there’s a bigger problem — which is that you think that your content is the seal. It’s not. You are. Read On…
It’s 9 p.m. and once again, you can’t think of a damn thing to write.
But you’ve got to get your next [assignment/blog post/business article/autoresponder campaign/etc.] out the door. Preferably yesterday. Writer’s block, right?
Nah. “Writer’s block” is a bit of a cop-out, isn’t it? No knock on writers who believe in the muse, but I think it’s silly to suggest that all good writing starts with an epiphany. Worse, it makes writing seem esoteric and scary to the many people on this planet who write daily — not for pleasure, but for business. Read On…
Ask anyone: writing well is hard to do. Writing well and writing regularly, even harder. But you can make it easier.
One of my favorite tips — something most marketing copywriters are familiar with, thanks to the David Ogilvys and Robert W. Blys of the world — is to keep a swipe file handy. Copywriters keep swipe files of brilliant heds and marketing campaigns for inspiration and concrete, structural formulas that can be leveraged in their own copy. But swipe files are not just for advertisers and copywriters. I’ve always kept a variety of swipe files, but recently it’s dawned on me that, as great as this is for me, the people who REALLY need swipe files are my clients. Because the one issue I hear from them? All the time? It’s not lack of ideas. (They have plenty of those.) Read On…
Apologies in advance to the creative writers among you, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that all writers — yes, journalists, copywriters, marketers-who-write, etc. — should take a creative writing workshop. One where your content gets picked apart by a group of skilled peers while you cower, mortified and angry, in the corner.
Actually, the point of this exercise is to not do that — the cowering part. But you’ll cower regardless.
The problem is your ego. Read On…
The end of summer always gets to me. Nothing, growing up in New Jersey, was as romantic as summer — the sudden, electric thunder storms. Hot nights playing capture the flag. The hum of cicadas.
And later, the late nights on the boardwalk — if you squinted, you could still make out the white water, illuminated by arcade lights as the waves broke below. Read On…