Read Read Read Write Write Write

Want to be a better writer?

Read.

In the words of Cole Schafer:

Reading has changed my life.

It’s a friend that always picks up.

It’s an escape hatch on the afternoons when my mind is heavy with worry.

It’s a mirror to look within myself when my awareness is lacking.

It’s a time-machine that lets me read the thoughts of those that lived before me.

It’s a teacher that teaches me how to live fuller and love harder and speak kinder and be easier (on both myself and others).

It’s a luxury, perhaps one of the only luxuries, that doesn’t cost a fortune.

William Faulkner:

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.

Richard Steele:

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Annie Proulx:

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.  

 

Jan Fortune:

Reading not only expands your imagination, vocabulary and empathy but also your ability to reshape your writing in unexpected ways.

Maya Angelou:

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

Paul Graham:

You can't replace reading with other sources of information like videos, because you need to read in order to write well, and you need to write in order to think well.

Stephen King: 

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one's papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor. 

André Maurois:

Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original and by destroying one's first productions. 

Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.

Roald Dahl

If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books. 

Tony Hillerman:

The best way to learn to write is by reading. Reading critically, noticing paragraphs that get the job done, how your favorite writers use verbs, all the useful techniques. A scene catches you? Go back and study it. Find out how it works.

Mary B. W. Tabor:

One sure window into a person’s soul is his reading list.

Madeleine L'Engle:

You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. 

Lisa See:

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river. 

Daniel Pinkwater:

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

Ernest Gaines:

The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.

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J.K. Rowling became a billionaire writing books.

Jeff Bezos became a billionaire selling books.

Warren Buffet became a billionaire reading books.

What book are you currently reading?

Here's a good place to choose your next one:

17 Books Writers Must Read

The more I edit, the better I write.

The more I edit other people's writing, the better my writing becomes.

This struck me when I saw this quote from Eddie Shleyner: “The more I edit, the better I write” about editing his own copy.

Eddie Shleyner

I agree wholeheartedly.

But, until I thought about it, I hadn't realized how editing other people's writing had impacted my own.

When editing another writer's work, I want to be able to justify the edit to the writer, if necessary. So I think about each edit differently (and in greater depth) than when working on my own writing. I believe this process is positively impacting my writing both in early drafts and during final editing.

Guess it's just "exercising the muscle" in a different way.

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NOTE: In 2021, I was interviewed by Eddie: Micro-Interview: Scott Frothingham, Copywriter

The 17 Copywriting Axioms

Legendary copywriter and entrepreneur Joe Sugarman passed away March 18, 2022 at age 83.

He was a genius direct response copywriter, best known for refining the craft of advertorials, and for his best-selling product: BluBlocker Sunglasses. 

For today's marketing writers, his book The Adweek Copywriting Handbook is considered a "must read" featuring advice such as:

“So your first sentence should be very compelling by virtue of its short length and ease of reading. No long multisyllabic words. Keep it short, sweet and almost incomplete so that the reader has to read the next sentence.”

Since you're reading this blog, you most likely already own The Adweek Copywriting Handbook . Now get a copy of Sugarman’s Advertising Secrets of the Written Word. 

Joseph Sugarman (1938-2022)

Here’s a tease of what you’ll get in the book: 

Sugarman’s 17 Axioms of Copywriting.

1. Copywriting is a mental process the successful execution of which reflects the sum total of all your experiences, your specific knowledge and your ability to mentally process that information and transfer it onto a sheet of paper for the purpose of selling a product or service.

2. All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of the copy.

3. The sole purpose of the first sentence in an advertisement is to get you to read the second sentence of the copy.

4. Your ad layout and the first few paragraphs of your ad must create the buying environment most conducive to the sale of your product or service.

5. Get the reader to say yes and harmonize with your accurate and truthful statements while reading the copy.

6. Your readers should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it as if sliding down a slippery slope.

7. When trying to solve problems, don’t assume constraints that aren’t really there.

8. Keep the copy interesting and the reader interested through the power of curiosity.

9. Never sell a product or service, sell a concept.

10. The incubation process is the power of your subconscious mind to use all your knowledge and experience to solve a specific problem, and its efficiency is dictated by time, creative orientation, environment and ego.

11. Copy should be long enough to cause the reader to take the action that you request.

12. Every communication should be a personal one, from the writer to the recipient, regardless of the medium used.

13. The ideas presented in your copy should flow in a logical fashion, anticipating your prospect’s questions and answering them as if the questions were asked face-to-face.

14. In the editing process, you refine your copy to express what you want to express with the fewest words.

15. The more the mind must work to reach the conclusion successfully, the more positive, enjoyable or stimulating the experience.

16. Selling a cure is a lot easier than selling a preventative, unless the preventative is perceived as a cure or curative aspects of the preventative are emphasized.

17. Telling a story can effectively sell your product, create the environment or get the reader well into your copy as you create an emotional bonding with your prospect.

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Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write
Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs

Available on Amazon

Yes, Writers. Use the Passive Voice.

I know you've been told not to use it, but sometimes, the passive voice can be your friend.

I use it when the action (or the target of that action) is what I want to emphasize.

For example:

The nation's premier civil rights legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was signed into law on July 2, 1964.

I could've written: "The US president signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2, 1964 as the nation's premier civil rights legislation" ... but I wanted the "star" of the sentence to be the Civil Rights Act ...

or

My bike was stolen last week. I had to walk to work until I could get a new one.

I could've written, "Somebody stole my bike last week" ... but I wanted the attention to be on my bike and that it was stolen, not an anonymous thief.

Using the passive voice is a matter of style, not a grammatical error.

That being said, don't overuse it. The passive voice can make your writing wordy with complicated sentence structures. And overuse can make your writing flat and uninteresting