Instant Ink: the (undervalued) importance of spontaneity in copywriting
Regular readers of this column – family members, insomniacs and the like – may be surprised to learn that it typically takes me an hour or two to write. Admittedly, the Proustian approach to sentence length and an inappropriately jaunty attitude towards punctuation may suggest otherwise, but I assure you it’s true.
It’s not especially that I’m a patient and conscientious writer. Even within these opening 60 words I broke off to drink a fizzy water and then Google the various implausible scenarios in which fizzy water will definitely kill me.
Ordinarily my approach to writing has become more spontaneous (admittedly, so near a relative to ‘Slapdash’ that it would be inadvisable for them to mate).
At the beginning of most copywriting careers we are drilled in the polytheism of Time and Detail. If a brief can be answered in less time than it takes to read, then the work, invariably, will be bad.
And, every inch the people pleaser, I did my very best to conform with this doctrine – even if it quite obviously didn’t fit my own more instinctive approach.
Countless times I sat dutifully tapping a keyboard or noodling with a pencil – trying to appear pensive and studious while the answer to the brief sat finished and ready at the top of the page.
I ‘soon’ came to realise (in the sense that a decade is sooner than an age) that the only time that should be afforded to any copywriting job is the time it needs.
Time, unlike discipline and objectivity, is something of an illusion when it comes to effective copywriting. Something remarkable can appear within seconds, just as something trite and useless can easily be wrenched from hours of diligent industry.
Not surprisingly, when I speak to heads of copywriting teams about the qualities they value in a writer, pace is seldom underestimated. And, if they were being franker than they are perhaps allowed, I suspect that few of them would feel comfortable taking on a one-speed writer when that one speed is anything short of neck-wrenching.
Of course, that is not to say that the ability to arrive at solutions quickly should become our new idol, false or otherwise. Nothing is slower than fast, sloppy work.
But for writers who feel confident and productive when plunging straight into a brief, the merits of spontaneity perhaps trump those of contemplation. Some writers, particularly those who have slurped down more briefs than they have gloopy agency tea, are hardwired to write as they think and vice versa.
The accusation usually levelled at those who favour fast and dirty over a more earnest plod, is that they are complacently turning the handle on the sausage machine. In some cases this is no doubt true. But amongst the best spontaneous copywriters I know, the urgency, vigour and artlessness in their method is invariably reflected in their copy.
And seeing as this painfully un-spontaneous piece is tickling against the 90-minute mark, I’m inclined to wrap things up. Besides, I think I feel a fizzy water embolism coming on.