The Agony and the Ecstasy of Copywriting
Career freelance writer and copywriter Robert W. Bly discusses the agony and the ecstasy of copywriting and how a human touch is always best.
While I was studying the source material for a new ad I was writing on a new industrial product, LR, the advertising manager, came into my office and handed me an ad he wrote for the same product. When I showed shock at his speed, he nicely explained: “Well I didn’t agonize over it.”
And the ad? It was okay. But it could have been a lot stronger. The difference between me and LR then—and now—is that I do agonize over the copy I write. A lot. Because I care.
Most often—though admittedly, not always—the best writers put in endless blood, sweat, and tears over their work. Writing, rewriting, editing, and revising to get it just right…and make it the best it can be.
For example, E.B. White wrote nine drafts of Charlotte’s Web. Dostoevsky made endless revisions, drastic rewrites, and multiple outlines—constantly shifting the direction, scope, and perspective of his novels as he wrote.
Copywriter David Deutsch compares fine writing with high-end crystal glasses that when tapped, vibrate and give off a clear ring. He advises, “Test your copy—especially AI-assisted copy—the same way. Give it a tap by reading it aloud. Does it vibrate with life because there’s clearly a living, breathing, feeling human behind it? Or does it clunk like cheap glassware?”
My experience is that to make your copy vibrate with life instead of clunk like cheap glassware, you’ve got to agonize over it. Sweat over it. Think about it. Write and rewrite it many times. Care about it.
There is no other way to reliably and consistently write A-level copy all or most of the time. At least not for me. Because as a professional copywriter…and a human…I care dearly about the quality of every promotion I write. On a personal level. So often, my work pace slows to a crawl…with fitful stops and starts…so I can get every word right—or at least just as I want it to sound.
As Dan Chiasson writes in the New York Review of Books: “Writing time is variable, plastic, marked by long periods of foundering and sudden adrenalized bursts; it pools and flows; it gets stoppered and unstoppered.”
And what concerns me about AI is: AI doesn’t agonize over copy. It doesn’t care. Or at least AI doesn’t care about writing on a personal level like I do—because it’s not a person. It’s code.
AI has no emotion or feeling about or concern for getting the copy as right as it can be. Says Chiasson, “I feel I must actively preserve thinking as the medium in which language is generated, against Google’s satanic offer … to ‘help me’ surrender the pleasure of making the next associative or logical leap on my own. As a human writer, I am wired to care about and value writing…and in particular, my writing … and always make it the best it can be.”
But AI doesn’t give a rat’s ass. It is simply algorithms…guided by what SF writer Tom Godwin referred to as nothing more than “cold equations.”
“Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself,” Plato said.
Well, writing is first and foremost thinking.
“When muscles aren’t used, they atrophy and get weaker,” says copywriter Steve Maurer. “That includes the big gray squishy one between your ears. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use AI as a tool. Just be careful how and when you use it.”
Which is why I will always favor the old way of doing my own writing, rather than the new way of instructing a machine to do it for me.
John Keats: “This beauty’s kinder, yet for a reason…I could weep that the old is out of season.”
And Matthew Koebbe of NASA wisely notes, “Until AI develops feelings and emotions, it won’t be replacing humans. It might be able to write a novel, but it won’t be The Great Gatsby.”
