Writing Wednesdays
The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned
By Steven Pressfield | Published: October 21, 2009
My first real job was in advertising. I worked as a copywriter for an agency called Benton & Bowles in New York City. An artist or entrepreneur’s first job inevitably bends the twig. It shapes who you’ll become. If your freshman outing is in journalism, your brain gets tattooed (in a good way) with who-what-where-when-why, fact-check-everything, never-bury-the-lead. If you start out as a photographer’s assistant, you learn other stuff. If you plunge into business on your own, the education is about self-discipline, self-motivation, self-validation.
Advertising teaches its own lessons. For starters, everyone hates advertising. Advertising lies. Advertising misleads. It’s evil, phony, it’s trying to sell us crap we don’t need. I can’t argue with any of that, except to observe that for a rookie wordsmith, such obstacles can be a supreme positive. Why? Because you have to sweat blood to overcome them–and in that grueling process, you learn your craft.
Here it is. Here’s the #1 lesson you learn working in advertising (and this has stuck with me, to my advantage, my whole working life):
Nobody wants to read your shit.
Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.
It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.
Nobody wants to read your shit.
There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too.
They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no matter how worthy or how much you love it.
What’s your answer to that?
1) Reduce your message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.
2) Make it fun. Or sexy or interesting or informative.
3) Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.
When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer, must give him something worthy of his gift to you.
When you, the student writer, understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire that skill which is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs: the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your imagined reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is this fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?
When I began to write novels, this mindset proved indispensable. It steered me away from Client’s Disease. It warned me not to fall in love with my own shit just because it was my own shit. Don’t be lazy, Steve. Don’t assume. Look at every word through the eye of the busy, impatient, skeptical (but also generous and curious) reader. Give him something worthy of the time and attention he’s giving you.
The awareness that nobody wants to read/hear/see/buy what we’re writing/singing/filming/selling is the Plymouth Rock upon which all successful artists and entrepreneurs base their public communications. They know that, before all else, they must overcome this natural resistance in their audience. They must find a way to cut through the clutter. As a fledgling cub at B&B, I remember days, weeks, months when our various creative teams did nothing but beat our brains out trying to find some way to make the dull exciting and the unlovely beautiful–and to make the beautiful-but-overlooked gorgeous too.
How, you ask? You’ll know you’re on the right track when beads of blood begin to pop out on your forehead.
Send Me Your Favorite Quotes from The War of Art for Future “Writing Wednesdays”
Future “Writing Wednesdays” articles will be inspired by quotes from The War of Art.
Please post your favorite quotes in the comment section following this post, DM them to my Twitter account (@spressfield) or post them to the Wall of my “Writer” Facebook page.
I will pick one or two quotes the Thursday BEFORE the next “Writing Wednesdays” post. The person whose quote I use in my Wednesday, August 5, post will receive a signed copy of The War of Art.
Reminder: Submit your quotes by midnight tomorrow, Thursday, July 30.
Please limit the quotes you submit to one quote per week.
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Thanks for this post, Steven. As someone whose first professional writing job was, and still is, as a copywriter, I can really identify with what you have to say. In my non-advertising work I frequently find myself adopting the audience’s perspective – thinking about what would reach them; keep them engaged. Adopting an elitist attitude that you are writing for yourself and yourself alone – so screw everyone else – is a major mistake.
I apologize in advance for applying a political twist to this BUT … in my newly awakened civic consciouness inspired in no small way by Mr. Pressfield’s blog on Afghanistan, I decided to read all 615 PDF’d pages of the “Affordable Health Choices Act.” Case in point: nobody reads this ’shit,’ not even the relative handful of our elected officials who ultimately make the choices for all 300 million of us. Our elected officials will vote on this bill — like they have so many others — without reading all the ’shit’ that comes with it. As a result, we’ve replaced ‘equal opportunity’ with ‘equal outcome’ to the detriment of America. I plan to pass Mr. Pressfield’s lesson onto as many of those officials that I can. Bottom line: KISS.
The one other thing when you’re writing ads–you have to know what you’re selling. When you’re writing a Rolex ad, you’re not selling a watch. Great ad writers make good poets. They understand every word counts. The guy who wrote, “Raid Kills Bugs Dead” was a poet in his real life.
Favorite quote / passage from: THE WAR OF ART
“The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did.” pg. 48
Great advice, Steve, and very helpful. If this fledgling author and writer can add two follow-on comments: 1 – Don’t assume the audience knows what you know (or think you know), and 2 – Don’t be afraid to use the ‘delete’ key to remove that awkward paragraph instead of making it longer and even more awkward.
And how about that old Schaeffer Beer ad with Ed McMahon “Take Home 2 sixpacks tonight!” Fewer words = more beer; a great ad!
Thanks for the advice! I am prone to write everything I want to read, it does not mean that anybody else is interested on that.
Wow, this comment really struck me:
Aside from battling Resistance, I’ve found the hardest act in the writing process is reading your own work as an impartial reader. I’m working on this right now with my own WIP. I’ve found some darlings that must be chopped. Damn, it’s hard.
What makes it worse is when you are surrounded by loving, but uninformed, people who think everything you write is golden. It’s easy to slip into this lalaland, then blame the publishing industry when the work doesn’t get anywhere. This is a common mistake of the not-yet-professional writer, and sadly, I’ve done it.
Writing lesson #2: Proofread before you publish, e.g. “lession” in your header.
Definitely: “Call it an overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.”
You know how many “wars” I’ve started with family/boyfriend/the coffee machine before I’ve sat down to write? Well, the number ain’t pretty.
My favourite quote, among many:
“A pro views her work as craft not art. Not because she believes art is devoid of mystical dimension. On the contrary. She understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. Like Somerset Maugham she doesn’t wait for inspiration she acts in anticipation of its apparition. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.
The sign of the amateur is the overglorification of, and preoccupation with, the mystery.
The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.”
Fantastic insight into the play between work and inspiration. O for a muse of fire? Get to work, you’ll find her there.
Thanks again for this book, Steven.