WRITING WEDNESDAYS
The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned
By Steven Pressfield | Published: October 21, 2009
[The blog is "on the road" this week. Here's a re-run of readers' #1 favorite Writing Wednesdays piece. See you next Wednesday!]
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.
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my apologies for all the typos and grammars errors above…..didn’t edit before I hit send
This is an amazing article and great advice.. I say this as I proofread a marketing piece with 8 bullets and 2 disclaimers.
Awesome article, it really applies to online marketing too. Keep it short simply to the point, but give the reader what they want.
Steven, great post. After reading it I’ve decided I just might be interested in reading your shit….might have to drop by Chapters and pick up a copy of the War of Art.
Cheers
HI,
Hey Steven, what a prolific article. I’ll be sending it to all my pals. Thanks.
Great points in that post. I sometimes have to give away free copies of my book to people to read, just to get them to admit, publicly, that my shit IS worth reading. And then other people, occasionally, buy my book.
But in general, you’re right. We’re bombarded with media, now more than ever, so you have to make people want your stuff, pique their curiosity … and then come across with something worth reading.
“Nobody wants to read your shit.”
That is such great advice. So very true. Nobody, certainly not one’s wife or the people you love and admire the most in the whole world, want to read you. I spent years getting my feelings hurt being a writer because I didn’t know that. Nothing against people, like you say, they’re just busy.
It should be on a sign over every creative writing class & workshop in the world: Nobody wants to read your shit.
Get over it. Write because you want to, and because you have to, and because you love it, because nobody wants to read your shit, not even you. Writing is not about boosting one’s ego, darn the luck. If you want an ego boost, get into something easy and non-competitive, like washing dishes.
Nicely written. Short, sweet and to the point, just like how all of us in the writing world need to do it.
I have to admit, I barely read this article. I read it enough to figure out what your point was, and that was because it was at the top of the links on Hacker News, which means a bunch of other busy people had already said this was worth reading.
That being said, if nobody wants to read your shit (myself included), they’re even less likely to read the comments way down at the end of the page. Go figure.
So…I’m applying this model to my classroom. Basically, I’m thinking that “none of my students want to know this shit”.