Before You Make The Leap…Get A Net!

In This Issue:

• Main Essay: Top Ten Tricks To Meeting Deadlines by Monica Day
• Resource Referral: Before You Make The Leap…Get A Net!
• Quick Copy Tip: A Little Valentine’s Wisdom

Top Ten Tricks to Meeting Deadlines
by Monica Day

The Universe played a trick on me. It endowed me with a great interest, and even a little talent, for making my living as a writer – and almost no internal ability to meet deadlines. So I’ve had to develop a few tricks of my own to compensate for my weakness in this area.

And since I’ve got a few deadlines looming (imagine that!) I’m going to get right to them – and then go put a few into practice!

1. Work in 15-Minute Windows: Schedule your day in 15-minute increments – even if you’re going to be working for an hour straight on something, look at it as four 15-minute slots. This helps you get back on track more easily when you stray, and keeps time from slipping away so quickly when you are nudging yourself back on track four times an hour.

2. Schedule Regular Colleague Check-In Calls: Very few people who work alone are able to achieve a constant state of hyper-focus. Most of us need the occasional push to keep going. Find someone who is willing to play the occasional “boss” role and call you to make sure you’re not playing solitaire on your computer when you’ve got deadlines looming!

3. Breakdown Projects Into Tasks: Rather than writing down the deadline for a draft or a headline and lead in two weeks, break it down further. How many hours of research will you do? Write down the deadline for finishing that stage…and so on. When you come up with intermediate deadlines along the way, the biggie doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

4. Pad Your Schedule: Let the client think it’s due next Wednesday, but plan your time as if it’s due the Friday before. The extra few days will give you time to polish the piece and make it better…or allow for wiggle room in case life gets in the way of work – as it often does!

5. Do Deadline Work First: Deadlines remind me of those old pressure cookers my grandmother used to boil rice when I was little. It would let a little steam out in a steady stream out the top. But if the steam got blocked, the lid could blow right off the pot! When you’re writing to a deadline, you have to let a little of the steam off every day so it doesn’t build up or it starts to constrain your ability to do the writing at all. Instead, work on a project that has a deadline looming first thing in the morning every day. Making progress on it will let out some of the air on the pressure that builds up and keep it flowing smoothly right up until it’s due.

6. Make Your Work Visible: Put a dry erase board somewhere near your desk and map out your deadlines and projects up on the wall. Getting a quick visual of your work flow is a great way to stay on top of it.

7. Cheat: If writer’s block is an issue for you, surround yourself with loads of reading material. When you get stuck, don’t just stare into space or go do some laundry. Read something similar to what you’re writing and see if it inspires you to keep going. As a mentor once drilled into my head, “That’s why they call it copywriting!”

8. Schedule Breaks: I know this sounds counter-intuitive…but it works. A five or ten minute stretch break every hour will re-energize you and make the work go faster. Writing might seem like a sedentary act when you’re sitting at the computer for hours, but it’s very active inside your head. Supporting that internal activity with your body will help the words flow faster and the deadline will be met more easily as well!

9. Declare A Moratorium on Distractions: Know the difference between a break and a distraction. Checking email, answering the phone, paying bills – all of these are distractions. They simply pull your mind in a different energy-depleting direction. Take a minute and make up two lists: one of activities that give you energy and a second of those that deplete your energy. When you’re writing on deadline, pick only activities on the refreshing side of the page, and leave the rest for another time.

10. Just Do It: You knew I was going to say this, right? Once you’ve thrown every trick in the book at the deadline, and it’s about to do another fly-by past your office…time to hunker down and just do it. Put one word in front of the other…eventually they add up into a finished project and you’ll be on to the next before you know it.

And now, without further ado, I’m on to a few deadlines of my own! If you have some tricks that haven’t made it onto my list, please share at admin@copyprotege.com.

Resource Referral: Before You Make The Leap…Get A Net!

February seems to be a time for extreme practicality, (Valentine’s Day notwithstanding). The starry-eyed days of setting goals and resolutions for the New Year have passed, the days are short (and where I live, cold!), and the carefree days of summer seem millions of miles away.

But it doesn’t have to be so hard!

One of the best parts of becoming a copywriter for me was learning how to boil down complex ideas into simple points. Now, when I come across something that seems hard, I find myself looking for ways to make it easy – the ten easy steps to accomplish this, the top three ways to change that. And guess what? It almost always works.

So if you have a goal of becoming a six-figure copywriter this year – let me make it easy for you today. Pick up AWAI’s Making the Leap – A Practical, Hands-On Guide to Launching Your Successful Freelance Career.

It hands you an easy-to-follow 8-step plan to getting your career off the ground. It’s simple. It’s cheap. It’s easy. I don’t know about you, but I plan to enjoy the coming joys of spring and summer…so let’s get these little practical matters of achieving our goals and dreams out of the way, shall we?

Quick Copy Tip: A Little Valentine’s Widsom

I will admit that Valentine’s Day has not been one of my favorite holidays for a long time…mostly because very few people get it right. If you trust the marketers, you’ll be led into making some sickly-sweet, embarrassing, and most likely dishonest proclamation of love to your honey. Or worse, you’ll do absolutely nothing out of an aversion to the holiday build-up. It’s a no-win situation.

Copywriting is like this. It’s easy to come on too strong. Or in an effort to avoid hype and hyperbole, you don’t make your case strong enough.

The trick to a good Valentine and good copy seem one and the same to me. Make a credible, believable claim. Back it up with proof. And then, make an offer your prospect simply can’t refuse. Works every time.