The 36 Minute Blog Post. Don't Try This At Home.

This post was originally written as part of a series of posts entitled: “Reflections On Being A Writer In The 21st Century”, which I wrote back in the Lumpy Kingdom. I will eventually transfer them all over here to share them with you all.

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I Am A Product Of My Environment

The reason I work this way is because I am a copywriter who worked in advertising agencies for two decades and although I had different titles, I never stopped writing copy.
When you write advertising copy all day long for 5 or 6 days a week for 20 years, minus vacations and days when you called in sick, your mind functions in a different way from other kinds of writers.

A Look Inside A Copywriter’s Head

Here’s how it works.
You talk to the people you need to talk to. You evolve the insights you need to incorporate into whatever you are writing. You go get a coffee and think about what you’re gonna do stylistically. Then you get back to your desk, open a file and start writing.
You don’t give a shit about typos or grammos or spaceos or another other o’s. You just write it out.
Your instincts will tell you when you are approaching the end and your experience will tell you how to wrap it up.
While you are writing the ending of whatever you are writing, you often times come up with a great selling line (or in the case of a Blog post, a headline) for whatever you’re writing about. And that’s a delightful bonus.
Then you stop.
But you’re not done. You need another coffee. But decaf this time. In actuality though, you’re just using that as an excuse to put some time between what you just wrote and how you’re gonna tighten it up and fix it.
This is time well wasted. You go chat with your art director. You stop by and exchange a few quips with your Creative Director. You go take a leak. You check out the layouts of the work you did earlier. All that stuff.
But all the time, you’re still thinking about what you just wrote. It’s all there on a page in your head. You can see the stuff you want to change. You catch that typo in the second paragraph, and you come up with an even better way to write your selling line.
Then you head back to your desk. Open the file again and read it out loud. Fixing things as you go. Then you read it again and fix a couple more things. Then you read it a third time, like you’re going to read it when you present it.
Finally you’re done. It’s the right length to fit the layout your art director figured out.
Nobody will screw with it because it’s idiot proof. Plus, nobody really wants to argue grammar or syntax with you. They never win.
You send the file to your art director and start all over again, with whatever is next in the pile. And so it goes.
So with this as my background you can see that I’m not gonna sit here and sweat over a blog post. Not now. Not ever.

If I Can Do It So Can You...Only Probably Not As Fast.

This blogging stuff is all about getting your ideas out there. And it’s something a lot of people shy away from. I‘m told that way less than 1% of people on a number of social media sites, beBee Included, ever publish anything.
Too bad, because everybody’s got good ideas. They shouldn’t be afraid to express them. They should just go for it.
What’s the worst that can happen?
No, really. Some idiot you don't know will give you a bad comment? Well that’s scary. But what about all the other people who will applaud you for at least giving it a shot? Hmmm.

"Fear is the mind killer"
Frank Herbert (In Dune)

I know it’s easy for me to say, because I have been writing pretty much all my life. But this isn’t rocket science. It’s really more about just taking your time, expressing yourself honestly and reading it over a couple of times before you you publish.
It may not be something that shakes the earth. But it’s a start and you know what they say about the journey of a thousand miles.
Nobody can really teach you how to write. But I can, and often do, encourage people to start writing because that is the best, and only, way to really learn how.
Total elapsed writing time here: 36 minutes 18 seconds.

If you want to read more of my stuff, you can do that here:

https://www.bebee.com/publisher/@jim-murray

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https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/

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