Copywriting
Clear is Kind: Why You Should Endure The Discomfort of Being Direct
There is no such thing as a friendly reminder. “Friendly reminders” are passive-aggressive roundabout ways of avoiding direct communication and clarifying your position. There are fascinating reasons why we do this, which Dr. Harriett Lerner, Patron Saint Of All Things Anger, talks about in detail here. The gist is that many of us avoid conflict (…)
Write As You Speak
When I first started Writing Professionally (that is to say: being published for free), I worked for a local magazine called INSite Atlanta where I took whatever job they gave me. I wrote the “Hot or Not” column for a while and then graduated to celebrity interviews which was cool because I got to attend (…)
Why People Who Go To Therapy Become Better Copywriters
During the previous run of The Copy Workshop, I thought a live fireside chat with a professional copywriter would help invigorate the classroom, so I invited my friend, Carolynn, to speak to students. And while traditional speakers give tips, tricks, frameworks, and takeaways – Carolynn gave us the opening scene of The Godfather. [To find out (…)
A Grammar Crisis
A friend pulled me into a marital dispute which is a precarious place to be and in ordinary circumstances I recommend avoiding this at all costs, but this dispute was a grammar one and so I had no choice. I had to weigh in. The dispute was over whether or not it was kosher to begin a (…)
The Nonsense Gap
It is impossible for me to watch Particle Fever without crying. Particle Fever is my favorite documentary about the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. You can watch it on Netflix. Peter Higgs is a theoretical physicist who published his theory predicting the existence of the Higgs particle in 1967. It took 45 years before (…)
Write Copy You’re Proud Of
There’s a category of businesses I call “cookie-cutter” because they all look the same. You can tell who runs a cookie-cutter business because they’re obsessed with business “formulas” for scaling. And they do it quite well. If you want to run a cookie-cutter business it will probably work, at least for a little while. Books (…)
Copy Lessons From Ski School
When I was 5 my parents put me in ski school to learn how to ski. Five hours later they returned and I was a pile of tears. Not only could I not ski, I now HATED skiing. I had (and still have) terrible spatial awareness and my body doesn’t listen to my instructions. When (…)
The Right Words Can’t Fix The Wrong Strategy
A colleague keeps asking for my thoughts on promoting his book and I haven’t had the courage to tell him I could not get past the first chapter. In my defense, the book is already published, so my feedback at this point isn’t mission-critical. If the man wanted true feedback he’d have sent it when (…)