Copywriting is a mental process the successful execution of which reflects the sum total of all your experiences

Realize how important it is to know your product and know your customer. It is this specific knowledge that will make a dramatic difference in your ability to communicate your thoughts in copy.

The bottom line for all these approaches is that copywriting is primarily the mental process of first getting your thoughts organized in your mind and then eventually transferring them onto paper. There is no best method—just what works for you. But the best place to start, without question, is to start. That’s right. Pick up a piece of paper and a pen, and start. Do enough of it over a long enough period of time and I guarantee you, you’ll improve each year. Write articles for a local newspaper. I started writing for my high school paper. It gave me experience and confidence. Write letters, write postcards—just plain write every opportunity you can.

Another fact to realize about writing copy is that the first draft of an ad is often terrible and the real skill in copywriting is taking that rough draft and polishing it. You might add words, delete entire sentences, change the order of sentences or even paragraphs. It’s all part of the copywriting process. I often pointed out to my students that if everybody in the class were given the assignment of writing a draft of an ad for a product, the first draft of my ad would quite likely be terrible compared to everybody else’s. It is what I do with the copy after my first draft that really makes the difference.

In that first draft the goal is to put something—anything— on paper, the emotional outpouring of everything you are trying to convey about your product or service. Don’t worry about how it reads. Just get it down onto something you can work with like a computer screen or a piece of paper and then go from there.

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.

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 by Joseph Sugarman