Dear Workers of Wonders,
It’s often the unexpected thing that links two careers together.
I practiced law for more than nine years and have worked as a freelance copywriter for more than a decade. For the past year, I’ve been working on transitioning from copywriting to a full-time career as a writer who tells stories with collages and poems.
The most useful skill I learned as a lawyer that serves me as a copywriter and a poet is the ability to ask the right question.
In practical terms, only by asking the right question can you ever find the right answer. But, asking the right question is more than soliciting an answer. The right question unlocks someone’s process. It shows you how they think, how they make decisions, and how they see themselves in the larger world.
I recently received a message from a potential client who was thinking about hiring me. Our first communications had several red flags. But one question he asked me cemented my decision to decline to work with him.
He wanted a detailed description of my writing process.
My specialty as a copywriter isn’t with a specific type of industry or format. I specialize in working with businesses that want to attract sophisticated clients with information-rich diets.
From the tone of the prospect’s messages, I could tell that he didn’t value me as a skilled professional providing a critical service to his business. The fact that he thought I should explain to him my process before I even knew what his company did or what kind of work he needed told me he would be a nightmare to work with.
It’s not that I try to keep my process a secret. I happily share my process with anyone who asks, and I‘m going to go into it in some detail here.
I don’t think any of my clients have ever asked about the details of my process because those are irrelevant to them. They care about the results.
It’s other creatives who are interested in things like process.
I’m also confident that if I had invested the time to honestly detail my process, this particular prospect would have tried to get away from me as fast as possible. After ten years, I have a decent sense of when I’m not a good match for someone.
My copywriting process is much like my poetry-writing process. First I read a lot, then I do nothing for a long time.
After I’m done doing nothing, I write the copy incredibly fast, usually in less than an hour. I then proofread the copy, and let it sit and do nothing again for a day or more.
Finally, I make another pass where I make edits, rewrite awkward clauses, and delete about 1/3 of what I’ve previously written to get the piece into fighting shape.
It’s the nothing part that drives a certain type of micromanaging client insane. They wonder why I don’t just write the copy straight away after I’m done with the research.
But what I’ve learned, and what every artist and creative professional I know has learned, is that it’s the long periods of nothing when the magic happens.
I ask my clients a series of questions so that I can determine what they do, who their ideal client is, what the client’s pain points are, how the company solves those pain points, and what makes the company different from its competitors.
What I care about the most is the who. I spend time learning all I can about the people they want to sell to. Even if they are selling to other businesses, I want to know who the people are that make the purchasing decisions.
During the first long period of nothing time, my brain is digesting all the information I’ve consumed. Ideas are bouncing around and colliding. There are a lot of really terrible writing mistakes that I avoid making by not writing until my ideas have had time to ferment.
My nothing time includes such exciting events as long walks, running errands, doing chores around the house, showering, and playing with our dog Loki.
During these activities, sometimes I’m consciously thinking about client projects. But most of the work happens in my unconscious. The ideas for the copywriting sit in the brine of every other copywriting project I’ve ever done, all the ads I’ve ever seen, the books I’ve read, the movies I’ve watched, and the music I’ve listened to.
I take deadlines seriously. So, I make sure I sit down and write a few days before I have to turn in my work. Because I’ve allowed my unconscious mind to do all the work of filtering out bad ideas and creating new ideas by combining unlikely elements from my past, the actual writing is usually easy and fun.
I don’t have writer’s block because when it’s time to write, the words are ready to flow.
However, while my favorite part of writing is crafting the first draft, the two most important parts of my writing process are the long period of nothing and the editing, where I cut down my copy to the bare essentials. (If you missed it, I spent a lot of time showing how I edit haiku last week.)
As I’ve mentioned before, it took me a long time to appreciate the value of editing my copywriting. After all, time is money for freelancers.
But seeing Picasso’s series of pictures of a bull helped me see editing in a new light.
In 1945 Picasso created a series called The Bull.
He wanted to find the true spirit of the drawing. As you can see, each drawing becomes simpler and more abstract than the one before. The final image looks as if it could be from the famous cave paintings in Dordogne, France.
Copywriting (and poetry) are about the essence of an idea. The best performing sales copy succinctly communicates an emotional trigger with just enough facts for you to feel good about buying what you really want to buy.
But to get there, you have to strip away a lot of bull.
(Writer Trung Phan had a great Twitter thread about how Apple uses Picasso’s The Bull to teach core principles of design and business.)
Creative Challenge:
Look at something you’ve made that you’re not quite happy with and see if you can cut out more bull until you are left with the essence of your idea.
About the Art:
My spreadsheet tells me that I wrote the haiku on November 26, 2021. I was in a zone that Thanksgiving holiday because I wrote 24 poems that day, 33 the day before, and 32 the day after.
The mountains in the background are from a series of photographs taken by James Nasmyth in 1874. I cut them out and digitally messed with the coloring.
He created a series of models of what he thought the lunar surface might look like using plaster models of sketches he had made from observations through his telescope. You should read the whole story of his work on The Public Domain Review blog. It’s a great place to find weird stuff.
Everything else in this collage comic was originally hand drawn by me separately and digitally altered. I then pieced the comic together by layering the different elements.
Thanks for reading!
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
Thanks for sharing that window into your world, Jason! Writing the first draft of a story is always the most fun for me, too. After writing it, I often step away and come back to the story at a later time to edit/revise.
Let the dough rise, then punch it down. Repeat.