Henry Miller

Two kinds of starving crowd

by

Around age 15, a short time after I had learned to read, I started going through the books of Henry Miller because his books were 1) banned upon publication in the U.S. and 2) had sex in them, and those two things are all the endorsement a 15-year-old boy needs.

Anyways, in one Henry Miller book, I forget which, Henry Miller, who was a kind of joyous social parasite, furiously writes about some cousins of his, who (it being the Great Depression) are starving.

The part that made Miller furious was his cousins’ patiently accepting their fate and subsisting on a leaf of cabbage a day, because, from I can remember, they are too proud or too feckless to ask for help in their starvation.

Henry Miller, who was living in Paris at the time, and was surviving on borrowed food, drinking borrowed wine, and sleeping in borrowed beds, couldn’t understand this.

Whenever he was starving, he would simply beat down his friends’ and enemies’ doors and beg and scream and complain until they fed him.

You’ve probably heard of direct marketing legend Gary Halbert. Halbert used to give talks in which he’d play the “hot dog stand” game with his audience.

“You and I have competing hot dog stands,” Halbert would say. “I’ll give you every advantage you want. I’ll just ask for one thing. Take whatever you want, give me this one thing, and my hot dog stand will whoop yours.”

Halbert’s one thing was a “starving crowd.”

Except, I’d like to suggest to you today there are two kinds of starving crowd.

There’s the “Henry Miller” starving crowd, people who cannot and will not accept their starvation, and who demand that the problem be fixed, and now.

And then there’s the “Cabbage Cousins” starving crowd.

Whether through pride, weakness resulting from starvation, or simply the fact that there’s a pound of bacon stashed somewhere in their house, which they secretly reach for late at night, the “Cabbage Cousins” starving crow accepts what to everybody else looks like unbearable starvation.

And if you wanna play the “hot dog stand” game with me, I’ll give you as big of a starving crowd as you like, provided that it’s the “Cabbage Cousins” kind.

Just give me a few Henry Millers instead, and I bet you I’ll push more hot dogs than you.

(You know what I mean. Don’t give me Henry Miller the broke social parasite. But do give me people who have some money, and a problem, and have shown that they are intent on getting that problem solved, and now.)

Anyways, I’m not sure if this was illuminating. But it is a distinction I had to draw for myself, and I figured it might be useful to you as well.

Maybe you’re wondering how you can know that somebody is intent on getting a problem solved, so you can distinguish the Henry Millers from the Cabbage Cousins in real life.

Fortunately, Gary Halbert has written up the answer for you. In case you’re curious:

https://thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/direct_marketing_to_a_starving_crowd.htm

How to develop your voice even if you don’t have one

by

I came across the following question today:

So this is one thing I’ve been trying to explore and develop.

I can write and convey ideas or messages, but it mostly comes out pretty dry (I’m a pretty boring person overall).

But I often read that punchy and upbeat copy, where you can really hear ‘voice’ and character come through.

Has anyone got any tips or articles or videos or professional quote makers they can recommend to develop this side of my writing?

Or should I just focus on writing dull informative stuff?

I’m also a pretty boring person, so this is a question I used to worry about as well. But I don’t worry about it any more. It seems to have taken care of itself. I asked myself how.

​​Here are a few ideas that came out — maybe they will be useful to you:

1. Write more. Swagger comes from lots of walking, up and down the same street.

2. Write faster. You’ll find stuff on the screen that makes your eyes pop out. “Where did that come from?”

3. Show and then tell. Punchy and upbeat copy is less about how you say it than about what you say. And it’s less about what you say than what happens in your reader’s head as a result.

4. Copy other writers for a while. I once read that Henry Miller would type up entire books by his favorite authors.

5. Self-consciously work on developing your voice. Invent your own phrases. Your own twists on cliches. Your own spelling. Most of it will be stupid. Most.

6. Infuse your own interests into your copy. Comedian Andrew Schulz: “Who cares if they relate to it? Make them relate to it.”

7. Get enthusiastic before you write.

8. Limit your editing. This is the second half of #2 above, for after you’ve finished writing.

9. Write more casual than you think is ok. You can always edit later.

10. Inject more drama. This goes back to #3 and #6 above. Your voice, like your writing in general, is more about what you say than how you say it.

And here’s a bonus #11:

Consciously do stuff that you know is wrong. For example, listicles like I’ve just written — they violate the Rule Of One, right?

​​Right. You probably won’t follow any of my ideas above, or even remember them come tomorrow. Even so. The more sacred a writing rule is, the more important it is to break it on occasion.

But here’s a rule that’s too sacred to break:

If you’re writing sales copy, you have to have a call to action. Otherwise the whole message was pointless. And in that spirit, my CTA to you is to sign up to my email newsletter about marketing and copywriting. If that’s something you can relate to, here’s where to go.