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As a worker, I’m sometimes embarrassed at how much time produced so little. It’s really conducive to imposter syndrome and lazyitis.
But, copywriting, real concepting is an around the clock job. It’s a lifestyle. I’d argue copywriters under bill their clients because it’s consuming. Once you get comfortable with that, go charge fucking bank. They’re paying to own your brain for a period of time with no breaks.
“You can write 40 social posts in two hours without any rounds of revision, right?” 🙄
(Not explicitly the request, but I had an account director brief me to draft content and source accompanying images for a social campaign but to be conscious that we only had 2-3 hours scoped so I couldn’t take too long, and then get on at me for needing more time because “we’re already over budget on this project.” Yeahhh, not happening.)
“I’d have written a shorter letter but I did not have the time.” —variation of the Blaise Pascal quote. Every good writer understands that, poor writers never do.
Great quote. I don’t think the issue is with other writers, but with counterparts (account, PM, clients) who try to rush the process.
Yeah. Sometimes I’m not even viewed as a “creative”.
Is this in-house or an agency? Or a design shop, which are notorious for just dropping in the copy. Smh. Time to move on, if you can.
For anyone who doesn’t understand this...try writing a tag line.
One of my pet peeves is when the client expects me to rewrite a line on the spot for something I’m happy to take my time with after the call.
Where do y’all have jobs that you can just write 600 headlines? I wrote 20-50 max per iteration. I don’t have time for more.
CW: "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
Acct: So, does end of play work?
When in a situation like that, I tell them for every one headline they see, about 200 draft lines were written and tossed out, and we don’t show those. But if they want, next time we’d be happy to present 600 lines to settle on the three best. This usually shuts them up.
It's worse every day. Even before the pandemic, agencies rarely pushed back against clients' insane timelines, because they were too afraid to lose business. So account has just become another version of the client that works in your office.
Mark Twain said “I didn’t have time to write a short story so I wrote a long one.”
lol. I thought it was Cicero who said that in a letter to his students. It’s also attributed to Pascal. I think they all had the same idea
I feel like I have to fight with account sometimes to do my job... it TAKES TIME TO WRITE (if you don’t want it to be sh**ty)
I had one account exec who told me she’d be glad to address client revisions if I was busy (she wanted a one-hour turnaround). “I was an English major in college,” she said, offering up her bona fides. Jeezus, stay in your lane.
I wrote 400 tag lines for a campaign recently; not to prove a point, particularly, although I suppose it did. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes. Sometimes it takes 5 days. We’re hired for our talent, not our hours. But the latter can be quantified.
Oscar Wilde understands.
Absolutely! Time, focus, research and testing. Especially with short copy.
No.
Yup.
The key to great writing is judicious editing. And more editing. Then finally, knowing when what you have works and stopping.
I’m starting to be convinced many people don’t care about good writing
My agency doesn’t value copywriters at all—they think headlines take an hour max. I have told them constantly that we need more time...and I don’t get it. What comes out of it? Nothing book-worthy. Meanwhile I concept the majority of the campaigns (w/o an AD), write headlines, write the entire deck, and an AD gets 3x more time than I do on projects. People don’t know how much time and effort good writing takes.
Copywriter 7 - Yikes! What agency? I want to stay far away.