You may remember that good writing is good thinking expressed clearly. In other words, writing is a process of organizing ideas into a logical arrangement. Connectivity in action.
What you may not have noticed, however, is that this puts the lie to that pervasive and damaging myth that writing is creative — that it requires a special talent or genius for originality.
Writing is not fundamentally a creative process; it is a connective one.
Creativity is actually just the ability to connect thoughts in new ways. Copywriting is a process of organizing the thoughts Sam needs to have in order to make a decision about buying your offering.
People who grasp this, and can get over the headiness of wanting to be “creatives” or wanting to show people their genius, tend to be much better copywriters. They use simple, concrete language, common nouns and verbs, and they don’t try to be clever.
They write copy that doesn’t call attention to itself or its author.
It isn’t “impressive” in the sense most ego-driven people would like — and that is exactly why it works so well. It is, as it were, transparent. It simply tells Sam what he needs to know as efficiently and clearly as possible, so he can make a decision.
Now, there are people who want to skitter helplessly down the slippery slope of creative brilliance (to paraphrase David Ogilvy, with apologies) — and they tend to be rather disappointed by this idea of writing as good thinking expressed clearly.
That isn’t what they want.
I doubt you are like this — but that isn’t to say you won’t have the impulse. So be sure to remember that good copy is like a store window: it should be invisible, so as to afford the best view of what’s on sale. You must master connectivity before you can even think about fretting over the romantic ideals of “developing your style” and “finding your voice.”
And by the time you’ve mastered connectivity, you’ll probably have come to realize that style and voice and creativity and all those other buzzwords are just amateur nonsense.
Now, this applies to any copy you write — but it is especially pertinent to writing your micro-course. For Sam to get value out of it, each lesson must be logically arranged, and should logically build on the one before. Since connectivity is so important here, I am going to spend this lesson making explicit a concept which has so far been only implicit in all the writing you’ve done.
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