Category Archives for The Craft

5 Things All Writers Can Learn From the Adweek Copywriting Handbook

How can you use your writing to sell something? Whether you’re a novelist, a content marketer, or any other kind of writer, eventually you’ll have to write something that needs to be persuasive. 

Decades ago, copywriters fought to get the attention of potential customers in print. Print ads ran in magazines or as mailbox-stuffers, and there was tremendous pressure to keep readers engaged long enough to sell a product or service. Joseph Sugarman was one of the most successful copywriters in this era. In one of his most popular ads, Sugarman sold a spelling computer by filling his ad with typos and offering $10 off the computer for each typo a customer found. He wrote a book, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, that shows readers how he did it.

It turns out that no matter what — or in which decade — you write, you can learn a lot from copywriters like Sugarman. I’m a copywriter myself at my day job, and my fiction has greatly improved from what I’ve learned doing this job every day.

Here are the five best writing lessons from The Adweek Copywriting Handbook.

Hacking Your Subconscious: How Tarot Cards Can Jumpstart Your Content

A neon eye and triangle blaze the word “PSYCHIC” in a strip mall window.  A fortune teller with a crystal ball in a smoky room cracks an egg and tells you a misfortune will befall you if you don’t pay her $300 for a “good luck spell.”  An old woman spits on your shoe and curses you for the rest of your life.

We’ve all seen the tropes surrounding fortune tellers and Tarot cards. Often regarded as a money trap for the desperate or a whimsical activity in the midst of a festival, Tarot cards can actually serve a purpose dear to our content makers’ hearts that is little known to the public.

With their brilliant colors and suggestive imagery, Tarot cards can carve a path straight to your subconscious. Even when you don’t know the story behind each card, the imagery can spark inspiration. When you do know something about the story, you can dig in deeper to the meanings and the collective human experiences that the cards represent. 

Here are three easy steps to use the Tarot to jumpstart your content creation:

• Step 1: Prime the pump with the cards — shuffle and choose one or two cards.
• Step 2: Open the inspiration spigot with free association.
• Step 3: Write your fool head off.

How To Use Empathy to Become a Better Writer and Communicator

What would you do if your kitchen caught ablaze? Would you fight fire with fire? Or would you instead grab the fire extinguisher and kill the flame? In any type of situation, it is essential to know how to best approach it first, instead of going with your instinct and ending up in hot water. 

Learning how to control the situation will prevent your kitchen from burning down to the ground. This applies in both the literal and metaphorical sense. It is also very relevant in communicating with people. 

Miscommunication is unavoidable in our everyday interactions; it is easy to have your message and its meaning lost in all the noise. Everyone has different interpretations of the same words, and our beliefs, values, and culture further filters everything we hear and read.

But there’s one thing that can help you cut through this. It’s called empathy, the ability to put things into perspective and see the situation from another person’s point of view to fully recognize a situation.

In this post I will show you why empathy is important for a writer, and how you can develop it. The better you can see where your readers are coming from, the more successful you can be in offering them precisely what they need.

The Myth of Originality: Why Your Voice Is More Important Than New Ideas

Ever spent countless hours trying to come up with “a new idea” for your post, blog, article, pitch, novel, whatever?

If so, first, welcome to the club, and, second, I have good news and bad news all wrapped into one: new ideas are not a thing. 

I know, this might sound clickbaity and edgy—and, indeed, it’s meant to be a little provocative. But I believe it also highlights something we tend to forget in our quest for originality: no idea can be 100% original. 

Nor does it need to be. In fact, I’m here to tell you what the secret sauce is, and new ideas are an optional ingredient. But before we delve into the recipe, let’s establish why no original idea is, after all, truly original.