Am I the only one that feels people don’t really understand that writing takes time? If anything, the shortest copy can sometimes take the longest time

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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.

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“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.)

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Great scene in the De Niro movie, “The Last Tycoon” — he’s playing Irving Thalberg (super famous MGM producer in the 1920s); movie written by Harold Pinter based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Anyway, cigar chomping chairman of the movie studio board, an NY banker, tells De Niro, “I went over to the writer’s offices today to watch one of your writers at work. And, you know, I watched him for five minutes—and he didn’t write a word.”

Could be worse?

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That’s hilarious! I once had a colleague tell me he expected to hear me typing away, furiously, all day every day.

Ugghhh I feel for this thread. Coming from a small shop, I have to wear many "hats." I relate to most of the comments here even though i'm not in deep like y'all are :/

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Definitely shorter copy needs to work harder. Was it Mark Twain who once said, “I’m writing you a long letter because I don’t have time to write you a short one”.

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Who said "If it's 60 words, you can bet it took more than 60 tries to get it right?"

Also see: if it reads easy, it was a hard write.

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Absolutely. I’ve been rushing to get a blog written, on demand, and it’s crap. So far.

The shortest copy ABSOLUTELY takes the most time!!!!!!

Can’t you just press a button and have it written? That’s what I get when clients ask me to do animation.

I prefer writing copy without the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

But “poop it out” is the new mantra.

We have 2,000 digital assets releasing this week and we need new headlines on everything. You have an hour.

I’ve absolutely experienced this, though I do feel like it’s changed a bit at my current agency. There is this annoying thing that sometimes persists where people talk about copy being so important, yet it often isn’t given the time it deserves.

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Shout out to everyone who’s ever had a white paper to “copyedit” that they just ended up rewriting entirely. I’m there today.

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