If you love to write, then you understand the struggle to constantly find inspiration that will take you to greater heights.
When you Google the phrase “writing inspiration,” you will be bombarded with all manner of links on quotes, helpful aids, ideas, and case studies that will help you find inspiration as a writer.
I work as a full-time professional freelance writer. More often than not, I have to come up with my own ideas – from scratch. In all honesty, that is the worst part of my job.
Because of the sheer volume of articles that I tend to handle on a monthly basis, there comes a time when my brain just goes on strike. When that happens, everything comes to a screeching halt. No longer will ideas flow in my head. Even with subjects I write about on a regular basis, I get nothing.
Zilch.
I’m no mind reader, but I bet I know why you’re here.
You’ve recently hired or are thinking about hiring a copywriter for your business, but things just don’t seem to be panning out the way you thought they would. The writer seems frustrated or annoyed by your questions, the feedback you’re receiving is overwhelming, and/or nothing seems to be working on your schedule. Plus, you’re watching dollars fly out of your bank account without really seeing the results you’re looking for.
Or maybe you’ve heard horror and/or success stories from fellow entrepreneurs who have hired copywriters, and you wanna know how to learn from their mistakes/follow their lead.
Even if you’ve got a stellar working relationship with your business’ content or copywriter, there are always ways to make it better or ready yourself for hiring a writer in the future.
A good place to start is by listening to seasoned copywriters.
As writers and creative types, we all have techniques to get in gear and move our work along. When I write and coach other writers, I approach the early stages of writing as an opportunity to generate great material. I describe the approach as, “Make a mess…then clean it up.”
The “make a mess” part is fun, liberating, and can generate a considerable volume of usable material. I encourage clients to “write for the trash,” i.e., with complete abandon. This process removes our inner judges and leaves us with piles of material to sift through.
Cleaning up our messy writing is a chance to find gems in the trash. By being thoughtful about reviewing our work and having a system to organize it as we clean, it’s possible to find all sorts of things we can use in a variety of current and future projects.
As I sit down to write this article, four days past its due date, at one in the afternoon, after scolding myself for wanting to take a nap literally three hours after waking up, I ask myself why any reader would want to listen to me talk about a healthy work schedule.
Hear me out! My struggle makes the need for this article all the more apparent… because I’m one paragraph in and about to take a lunch break…