Sausage... And A Big, Painful Gap

Here at Ad Zombies HQ, we've often joked about why we don't have any ads that show people writing. After all, copywriting is our bread and butter.

But here's the thing: watching the (creative) sausage get made…YUCK…no one wants to see that.

Because, for most people, writing is excruciatingly hard. That's why they don't do it.

AND THEN there's the small subset of humanity you call writers. For them, writing is… ALSO excruciatingly hard.

Here's the difference: they're good at it, and they can tolerate the pain. Sometimes with procrastination, sometimes with humor, sometimes with just the promise of relief when a project is finished.

The Big, Painful Gap

So, what separates the writers from the rest of us? A big, painful gap between WANTING to write and actually becoming GOOD at writing.

This American Life creator Ira Glass has perhaps the most popular quote about this amongst creatives, and rather than try and reinvent the wheel, we'll just give credit where credit is due and quote him (because if writing is hard, imagine writing about writing):

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me...It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions."

That's a lot to digest. But here's the tldr; that quote is NOT just about writing, or doing creative work, it's about doing almost ANYTHING.

I've written somewhere north of 100,000 ads over 40-plus years, including nine that ran during the Super Bowl. Every single one of those ads started life as garbage. Not "rough around the edges" garbage — actual, embarrassing, delete-it-and-pretend-you-never-wrote-it garbage. The gap Ira Glass is talking about doesn't close because you get smarter. It closes because you rack up volume until your taste and your output finally shake hands.

If you have good taste and want to make The Thing you wish existed, you're in for some pain and heartache.

Your Two Choices

You have two choices

1. Give up on it. Certainly easier in the long run, giving up on The Thing gives you back lots of time in your week to binge-watch an entire series on <insert streaming platform of choice here>.
2. Fight your way through. If you're really committed to making The Thing, the only way out is THROUGH. That means going through the pain of making The Thing, only to see that it doesn't live up to your standards. Then doing it again. And again. It may feel like you're getting nowhere, but every time you DO The Thing, you're learning and improving!

Much like starting a new workout plan, it will be painful. But if you stick with it, it will get easier and less painful — or at a minimum, the pain will become a familiar frenemy. I still rewrite headlines a dozen times before one earns its spot on top of the page, and I've been doing this since before most of you were born. The pain doesn't go away. You just get faster at working through it.

The Secret No One Tells You

Almost NO ONE likes writing. What most writers actually like is HAVING WRITTEN. Yes, it's weird and kind of perverse. But that's the secret. If you're staring down that gap right now and wondering whether a shortcut exists, it's the same one every working writer used: volume, not talent. Do the reps. Ship the ugly draft. Then do it again tomorrow.

Oh, and do you want to see the ad we'll never run? Here you go: