Nicolas Cole describes working alongside a billionaire copywriter who co-founded a major company. During timed writing sessions, Cole realized his mentor started with titles and structure while Cole jumped straight into drafting. Two hours of conversation after one session changed how Cole approaches writing entirely.
It was probably 7 or 8 years ago, and I met arguably one of the most successful sales copywriters on the planet. We became friends in LA, and he was very much like a mentor to me. Him and his brothers built a billion-dollar company. He's written some of the most profitable ads on the planet. We used to do writing sessions at his house, and we would like set a timer and we'd sit next to each other. We'd both write our own thing, and then the timer would go off and we'd be like, "How was your writing session? What'd you get accomplished?" And I remember one day we were both working on books and we set the timer and I sat there and I was writing, writing, writing. We finished, timer goes off, and he's like, "How'd it go?" And I was like, "Oh, pretty good. I wrote 2 or 3 pages of my book, did what what everybody does. Just went straight into the writing. And I was like, "How did your writing session go?" And he goes, "Good. I think I've almost got the title." Like, that moment fundamentally changed the way that I thought about writing. We ended up having a whole 2-hour discussion about why he starts so much higher level strategically, and I started to realize it was such a mistake for me to just jump right into the writing. Like, I didn't even know where I was going yet. I'm just writing words on the page.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
