Copywiting Tip #2: Start Fast. Engage Brain.
Start today.
Now. This very moment—long before you have a clue what you are doing. This sounds different from what Young said. Young said go slow, gather your material and masticate. Chew it over. And keep chewing. I agree with Young but with this addition: trick your mind into engaging the problem by jumping all the way to the end before even beginning to gather. Then go back to Young’s process.
Writing the end result out of ignorance does this: you know you’ll write dreck so your internal Editor-Nazi takes a nap while your inner poet-child scrawls all over the wall with red crayon. When you wake up the next day and look at the terrible mess the poet-child made, you recognize a couple very productive words that hint at where this thing needs to go. Sometimes those words or images drill to the internal core of the problem you might never have guessed at with all your precious process.
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Image Credit: Oliver Barrett via 2headedsnake
conversation is an engine 
Kirk, I don’t quite get the tip to jump “all the way to the end before even beginning to gather.” If I don’t know what the end will look like, how can I begin there? I know I’m missing something, so please enlighten me. Thanks.
jpschock
March 27, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Great question! It’s an exercise in imagination. Knowing very little–operating out of ignorance–you write out what you think the final solution looks like. It’s painful and hard and you produce something worthless. But forcing yourself to think to the very end also squeezes out the questions that you need to ask to get there. And it might provide some glimpse of the tone of the final result. Thanks for asking.
kirkistan
March 27, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Reblogged this on Details Have a Public Face and commented:
Our Technical Communication class will discuss steps to successful writing next week. An old copywiting trick I know and use every day is to immediately start writing on a project and go as far as I can, despite the fact that I may next to nothing about it. I recommend this method for two reasons: 1. It forces your most important question out into the open. Suddenly you know what you don’t know. 2. Now you have a draft. It may be a terrible, horrible draft, but it is a draft. And it is always easier to start with words on a page than a blank page. File this under “Love the Start.”
kirkistan
February 2, 2017 at 3:01 pm