6.30am – Wake up in hotel in Walthamstow, briefly wonder where I am. Remember I’m in London for meetings. Driving home later today. Realise how much I have to do today. Worry I’m not going to get chance to write an All Good Copy email. Wonder if I could record my day and whether that would be interesting to other copywriters. Decide to give it a go. Let’s get meta...
6.45am – Get in the shower. Think how the article might look considering the meetings I have and the copy I have to do today in between. Think it will be interesting. Possibly. Hopefully. Wonder if it’s fair as it’s not a typical day with me travelling. Or is it? There are very rarely ‘typical days’ as a copywriter. Figure it’s a good thing to explore. Worry if recording everything will actually take longer than just writing an article. Dry myself after the shower.
7.00am – Finish off some legal changes to a long copy sales letter I’ve written about cryptocurrencies for Agora Financial in the UK. Email it back to the UK legal team. Drink coffee using the tiny kettle in the hotel room. Write the first three entries of this article. Get dressed. (Yes, the last bit was done in a towel. Gross.)
7.15am – Have breakfast in the hotel restaurant overlooking the North Circular. Feel like I’m in a dystopian JG Ballard novel. Realising I’m hung-over, I stare for a while at a huge advert for the film Rampage across the road and wonder when Dwayne Johnson dropped ‘The Rock’ from his name. Return to orange juice machine six times. Workmen at table opposite look at me thinking: weirdo. They’re right. I message my fiancée, Ruth. Arrange a catch up with the publisher for Agora Financial in Australia. Write this entry. Go to the orange machine one final time. Why don’t they just offer bigger glasses?
8.15am – One bus and two underground trains into London. Remember how crap commuting is. Don’t have a book with me. (Currently reading The War at the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, which is great.) Can’t stand wasting the time commuting so manage to get my laptop out and start editing a press release another UK client wants me to rewrite for them. I get it half done before I have to change onto a much busier tube and spend the rest of the time sweating against a tall man’s back.
8.45am – Walk to Agora Financial UK office, while speaking on the phone with publisher in Australia about a new long copy sales letter he’d like me to work on. He’s in Melbourne, driving home from the office. Interesting that we’re both in transit and plotting work. It’s the beauty of the information publishing industry, I guess. Figure out a plan for the promotion and put it on my schedule for next week. Get into office, finish the call and write the last two entries.
9.30am – Finish rewriting the press release for the other UK client. Send it in for feedback. Even with a small bit of copy (this was around 300 words), I read it aloud a few times and edit it a couple of times. It’s good practice to do so with everything you write so your first drafts become inherently cleaner.
9.45am – Received some draft designs for the front cover of my book on copy from the publisher yesterday, so spend some time looking at them and deciding which elements I like and which I’m not so sure on. It’s really weird to see the covers. The book suddenly becomes a lot more real. Even though I’ve written the entire manuscript, which is pretty ‘real’, there’s something about seeing it look like something you would actually see in a bookshop that at least quadruples my excitement. My name in lights!
10.00am – Sit in on meeting with Agora Financial UK team. Discuss a few projects I’m working on and hear about other ideas people working on. Always interesting to remember there are so many different things happening, even in just one company like Agora Financial.
10.30am – Have a call with UK legal team to finalise the long copy sales letter I worked on in my towel earlier. Go through various comments and figure out solutions. This time fully dressed. Lots of ‘discussion’ as always, but all to make sure we can get the strongest copy. Reminds me of the piece I wrote about the legal process – you can read that here.
11.00am – Sit down to write some lift notes (this is the email copy that links to sales promotions online) for the launch of another sales letter I’ve written about trading currencies (the old fashioned ones this time, not cryptos) and is going to be promoted this weekend. Look to swipe file to see what’s worked before and get ideas. The aim of lift notes is to get the reader to click and arrive at the promotion in the right mood, so I always like to write them quickly and with a certain element of excited breathlessness as that’s how people will be seeing them in their inbox, fighting for attention.
12.00am – Realise I’ve done quite a lot and this piece is almost as long as a usual article already. Have a meeting with Agora Financial UK team to discuss other projects coming up and schedule some dates for when I should submit them. Realise I haven’t drank enough liquid and grab a glass of water. Sit down to write the last three entries.
12.20am – I’m getting hungry. And I also have an eye on the time, as I want to get back to the hotel to pick up my car and drive home to Ruth and my dog Pablo at a decent time. It’s a long old drive up to the east coast. I have one more meeting with a copywriting friend before I’m done for today and can head back home. I reread what I’ve written here and think it’s quite an interesting insight into how random even just a single morning can be for a copywriter. I wonder if this is typical. It is and it isn’t. I realise that jumping around from project to project is pretty typical and, as a copywriter, you need to be cool with that. It’s typical to have different projects at different stages…some still just ideas…others going through the legal process…others in production. Being able to shift your focus quickly is hard, but it’s necessary. It’s also typical to be talking to people all over the world…as a copywriter you shouldn’t limit yourself. As I finish writing this, America is only just waking up and the emails from over there will pile up while I’m driving home. I guess, though, it’s also not a typical morning because sometimes, as a copywriter, it’s necessary to close the door, get your head down and focus on just one project. This morning seems to have been typical of one type of morning, but another day I might just flit between writing, researching and looking after my dog. That kind of day would have made a much less interesting article, so I’m thankful I decided to do this today.
12.35am – Finish writing this and set it up in Mailchimp and WordPress to post out to you.
12.55am – Having loaded the article into Mailchimp and posted it on WordPress, I enter this final bit to round it off and close the circle. Then I’ll meet with my copywriting friend before heading home. I hope you found this somewhat meta piece interesting. As you can see, it’s been a pretty busy morning and I probably wouldn’t have had chance to write something otherwise. But I guess thinking on your feet and producing this bit of copy as a solution to that is interesting in itself. Maybe not. Either way, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you thought…I’ll look forward to reading your feedback when I stop for chicken nuggets at the McDonalds at the Eye Green service station on the way home.
P.S. I wonder if you’d be interested in getting hold of a simple guide I’ve put together that outlines my own copy training methods?
Hey, you might be above that kind of help – and that’s fine.
But of course there’s a chance one little idea lurks in this guide you’ve not thought about for ages and it could be this one little idea helps you write a piece of copy that performs better than you expected and earns you more money and industry plaudits. Maybe. Maybe not.
But it’s worth a look, right?
So, take a look here to see what it’s all about – just click now.