The Adweek Copywriting Handbook

Practice, Practice, Practice Chapter 3
One of the first things I would ask my seminar students to think
about was the definition of good copywriting. Is it the skill of being
able to accurately put words on paper? Can it be taught?
What sort of background do you need to be a good copywriter?
We would then talk about both general knowledge and specific
knowledge. But I explained that there was more to the art of
copywriting.
Copywriting is simply a written form of communicating
facts and emotions. It is a mental process. Some copywriters will
tell you that many of their greatest works were well thought out
in their minds even before they put them on paper.
Joe Karbo wrote one of the most successful income opportunity
ads ever written for his book, The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches,
in one draft and without corrections. It just poured out of his mind
onto a sheet of paper. And it was one of the few ads he ever wrote.
Some copywriters will tell you that they just sit down and
start writing. Some find that sitting in front of a computer does
the trick and others need something like a pen and a pad of paper.
My greatest ads were written during a variety of circumstances.
Many were well thought out before I put the first word
to paper and they flowed out with hardly a correction. Other
times they would flow but you wouldn’t recognize the first draft
from the last because of the number of corrections I made.
Sometimes I would sit in an airplane and just write from takeoff
to landing and come up with great copy. And other times, I used
my computer with great success.
It’s All a Mental Process
The bottom line for all these approaches is that copywriting is
primarily the mental process of first getting your thoughts organized
in your mind and then eventually transferring them onto
paper. There is no best method—just what works for you.
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