Dangerous Reading for Novice Copywriters
Warning: the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook, which I’ve just made available for purchase, is not for newbies. Why? Because newbies assume that “always” means “always,” and “never” means “never”; and they don’t have a broad enough context to distinguish a ghastly error from a brilliant innovation. The Workbook is full of alwayses and nevers, because it’s a compendium of advice from prominent copywriters plus standard practices in the field.
If you’re a copywriter but not a novice, you can skip this post and move along to the next one, Confessions of an Advertising Book Addict.
While I’m scaring people away, let me add that the Workbook is not going to be much use to you if you can barely write a grammatically correct sentence. Copywriting is, at its most fundamental, a form of communication. Applying the rules of English grammar is a prerequisite for communication – a fact that only writers of the most avant-garde fiction and poetry ignore. (And you can bet they don’t pay the mortgage with their writing income.)
If your grammar and style need work, you should curl up for a couple weeks with Foerster and Steadman’s Writing and Thinking: A Handbook of Composition and Revision, Zinsser’s On Writing Well, and/or Davenport’s Rex Barks. (Yes, really! I’m a very good writer, but when I taught my daughter English I learned a lot from Rex.)
Continuing in this negative vein, let me also discourage you from buying the Workbook if you routinely crank out 500-word articles for $10. If your style of writing is to type as fast as you can and submit your first draft, the Workbook isn’t going to be cost-effective for you. If, on the other hand, you’re charging $50-60 per hour and you’re serious about making your writing as clear, concise, and persuasive as possible, then the Workbook will pay for itself in a month or less, through savings in time stress.
If I haven’t scared you off, please do read the next post, Confessions of an Advertising Book Addict. Or you can click here for more information about the Workbook (including table of contents and sample pages).
