Copywriting Secret of the Masters - Brainstorming for One - John Forde

Brainstorming for One "Brain-writing" is not my term. But we're going to make it our own by revising it a little to make it more productive…

You brainstorm to get ideas when you have none.

Ideally, you do so in a group. So you can feed off each other. So you can legitimize sitting around drinking coffee. So you can get others to do all the hard thinking for you.

In all those respects, group brainstorming is a good thing.

But what do you do when you're writing in isolation?

Brain-writing is a way to kick ideas around … jumpstart your engines … and get into that "zone" of creativity that you normally hope to get in a group session.

In fiction circles, there's something similar called "free-writing."

USUALLY, it simply means setting a timer, putting pen to page, and letting the ideas pour.

Whatever it is, you write it down. You don't stop until your pen runs out of ink or your elbow balloons like a grapefruit.

But there are two problems with free-writing when you apply it to writing promo copy:  First, pens come with a lot of ink these days. Even the dime-store ballpoints could keep you scribbling well past deadline.  Second, sometimes it's the very prospect of a blank page … the sight of a blinking cursor… and the notion of all that cerebral "freedom" … that's got you stymied in the first place.  There is a more efficient way to get started.

If you were about to make bricks, would you begin without clay? If you were getting ready to make glass, would you begin without sand? If you wanted to make punch, would you leave out the hooch?

Of course not.

So why is it writers of any kind so often try to start conjuring up ideas out of thin air?

For all the reasons to get "blocked," this is the easiest of them to resolve. www.ProCopyWritingTactics.com