It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
I frowned. I bared my teeth. Two hours had passed since I sat down to write.
But I still hadn’t finished the email. All I had was a bunch of research and half-starts.
How much more time would I waste? Suddenly, ice water ran down my back. The deadline, I thought. It’s so soon.
Now I’ll be honest with you:
Writer’s block is not something I ever suffer from.
But I do suffer from writer’s fiddling… writer’s lack of focus… and writer’s doubt, which turns into writer’s backtracking.
I’ve found a few ways to manage these writer’s conditions. They don’t always work.
But thanks to a reader named Lester, I’ve now found a new way also. It works for writer’s block, too.
The technique comes from a marketing guy called Roy Williams. Williams gives it to you in three easy steps:
1. Randomly force upon yourself a dramatic opening statement BEFORE you know what you’re going to write about. [My tip: Google “weird opening sentences in books” and take the first result that comes up.]
2. Look for the defining characteristic of that statement.
3. Think about what you want to sell. Use the defining characteristic of the statement as the angle of approach into your body copy.
That’s it? Yep. I tried it. It works.
But here’s the thing that really gets me:
Williams performs this act on stage. He asks for a bunch of strange or shocking opening sentences. Then he brings a bunch of business owners up. He asks them what they would like to sell more of. And then he uses the process above to come up with cool ads for those business owners, right on the spot.
People think it’s magic. They even accuse Williams of planting stooges in the audience to set up the act.
But then Williams explains how to do this trick. It’s just what I told you above. It’s something anybody can do. But Williams says, nobody ever does it.
That’s the thing that really struck me. Because it reminded me of something I read early on in my marketing education. Fortunately, it came so early that it actually made an impact. Here’s the intro to it:
I’ll tell you something: This issue of my newsletter is going to make a lot of my readers very uncomfortable. Why? Simply because I know the difference between winners and losers and, in this issue, I’m going to put the choice right dead square in your face. I’m going to give you an extraordinarily simple set of instructions and, if you do what I say, your chances of becoming extremely prosperous are going to be magnified by a factor of at least 1,000!
But most of you are not going to follow these simple instructions. I know that already from past experience. And I even know already the reasons you’re going to give for not doing what I suggest. These are the same reasons everybody (including me) nearly always gives for not doing something which will make our lives better.
Does that make you frown or bare your teeth? Well, if you’d like to read more, and find out how to 1000x your chances of becoming extremely prosperous, before the clocks strike thirteen, here’s the rest of that thing:
https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/aslz_winners_losers.htm
(And if you want to subscribe to issues of my own newsletter, for free, you can do that here.)