Packing a Punch: Two Writers Who Can Improve Your Copywriting

Lately we’ve seen some great book recommendations swirling around the social media sphere for those who want to improve their copywriting skills. This got me thinking about writers who have helped me improve my writing style, and indirectly my copywriting. Two in particular stood out for me. One of them has an advertising background, and one would probably baulk at the thought of having anything to do with advertising. Let me introduce them.

Augusten Burroughs

Those with a literary bent have no doubt heard about this advertising copywriter turned bestselling memoirist. He shot to fame after publishing Running with Scissors,  which detailed the childhood abuse he experienced when his mentally ill mother sent him off to live with her equally mad psychiatrist. In 2006 the book was made into a film starring Alec Baldwin and Annette Bening. Burroughs has now published a total of three full-length memoirs and three memoir collections as well as a fiction book on home shopping (Sellavision) and, most recently, a self-help book, This is How.

There has been some controversy over the accuracy of Burroughs’s account in Running with Scissors. Perhaps in response to this, he has made himself extremely au fait with the workings of memory as they pertain to writing down one’s recollections of events.  This is relevant because what makes Burroughs’s work so riveting is the sharpness of the detail. Each scene is in focus, as if he’s standing behind his earlier self and recording everything. It’s the literary equivalent of hyperrealism.

A successful advertising copywriter for over 17 years, Burroughs was an alcoholic who almost drank himself to death in 1999. He wrote about his alcoholism and treatment in the memoir Dry. I haven’t actually read Running with Scissors. I have copies of both Dry and A Wolf at the Table, and I’d recommend both of them. Burroughs is a master at cadence, the strategic use of short sentences, and the intimate, informal tone that is now the preferred style for web copy. Dry in particular has a constant beat of self-deprecating humour, also a useful tool in some forms of web copy.

As a bonus, Dry is about the advertising world, so you’ll get an insider’s view of an ad agency in the nineties, a cracking memoir and a free writing tutorial all in one! The images are also fresh and engaging, exactly what you want in web copy. Here’s one example of the language:

She impresses me as someone who tosses Caesar salads in a hand-carved teak salad bowl. I bet she reads Joan Didion in hardcover. [Spoken by someone who knows how to picture their target market!]

Be warned that some of the worst extremes of alcoholism are described in this book, but it’s ultimately uplifting. A wild and mostly enjoyable ride.

Helen Garner



It would be hard to find someone further away from the advertising world than Helen Garner. She is an institution in Australian literature, less well known overseas. Her central place these days is rather ironic, given she burst onto the scene with Monkey Grip, an autobiographical novel about her addictive relationship with a junkie in the Melbourne counterculture of the seventies. This book set the scene for Garner’s continuing use of real life as inspiration for her fiction, taken as it was from her diaries.

Garner has now written four novels, four non-fiction books and three short story collections; her most recent novel, The Spare Room, was published in 2008. The Australian critic Don Anderson included her 1984 novel The Children's Bach in his list of ‘four perfect short novels in the English language’. Ed Campion wrote in the Bulletin: ‘Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia’. She’s received numerous awards, including the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2006.

Anything of Garner’s is worth reading for its riveting style, but I really want to recommend the feel of steel. This is a collection of non-fiction that combines longer essays with selections from the column Garner wrote for the Age newspaper for a couple of years. She would have been confined to a tight word limit for the columns (exactly what happens in web copy!), and her economy is remarkable.

Garner will often describe a person or situation with broad brushstrokes, but she manages to home in with one or two extraordinary images that bring them to life. Here are a couple of examples from ‘Baby goes to the movies’, in which Garner and her friend babysit Garner’s brand new granddaughter so that the baby’s mother can attend a film festival opening night:

Now there’s nobody out here, on the hectares of hideous carpet, but the sleeping baby and her two daggy bodyguards ...

... out of the lollyshop and the bar pours a line of very young Village workers in name-tags. They head straight for the baby and stand around her in a respectful curve.

Note in the second example how Garner hasn’t described the workers at length. Instead she’s picked out a couple of telling details. But ‘in name tags and very young’ says enough. The image of a line of workers pouring is also very vivid. There are many, many sentences like this in this piece and the rest of the book. Garner is a no-nonsense plain speaker and her style is indissoluble from her personality. One thing that distinguishes that personality is her powers of observation.

How can reading Garner help your copywriting? It’s well worth trying to emulate the vividness of the writing, the accuracy of the images, and the ability to convey so much using so few words. To think very concretely about what you’re trying to convey, and then bring it to life with arresting descriptions of the most important benefits. To include a couple of telling details about your target market and convey them as vividly as possible in a way that ignites the senses.

Above all, copywriting – whether for the web or otherwise – should be compelling. Both these writers fulfil that requirement in spades.

Word Wrangling: How to Turn Jargon into Clear, Customer-Focused Copy

You’ve got a piece of copy that you have to transform from an incomprehensible list of technical specifications to a clear, easily digestible summary. Or you’re staring at the Home page copy of a company that does something obscure, and every second word is industry jargon. How do you simplify it?

The key to turning dense, overly technical or jargonistic copy into readable and marketing-savvy text that will attract customers is to break the task down into steps. Not all the steps will apply to every task, and you may find yourself doing one step before another or tackling more than one thing at once. But however you decide to go about it, understanding the steps, which I've set out below, will help your overall planning.

1. Identify the purpose of the web page. Does it need to be a Home page, or could it simply be an information page? This will determine how much of the copy you use on the page, and how you will treat it. Some of the copy may be better off somewhere else. There are many ways more detailed information can be presented.  If necessary, check with your client as to where they’d like more detailed information to go.

2. Make sure you understand (most of) the meaning. You can’t write with clarity if you don’t understand what you’re simplifying. Think of the copy as a knot of wool that has become entangled. You need to untangle it before you can create something new with it. Extending the metaphor, you can’t know how long the piece of wool is until you’ve teased it out.

After you’ve read over a difficult phrase a couple of times, the meaning often starts to reveal itself. If not, don’t be afraid to query the client. You can do this by either submitting questions at the beginning, or using track changes in your document so that the client can see the changes you’ve made, and including comments using the track changes in-text comment function.

3. Use your judgement to eliminate unnecessary phrases. Sometimes jargon can be so intimidating and sound so important that it’s hard to get rid of it. In many cases when a particularly stubborn phrase refuses to reveal its secrets, you can simply delete it. (This is the great irony: sometimes the most difficult phrases are the least useful.) Use your judgement, and make alterations using track changes if you’re unsure.

4. Rewrite in stages. Once you’ve deconstructed the document, it’s time to rewrite. You don’t have to do this all at once. The first time, rewrite the copy in a way that expresses the meaning. Work out where all the parts go on the page. Then shorten the copy, add whatever copywriting ‘magic’ is needed, and clean it up. Leave the copy for a while, at least over night but longer if possible. Then come back and see if you can simplify it further. It’s amazing how much more editing can be achieved after the first attempt, but that first attempt gives you a good template to start from.

A good exercise is to set yourself a word limit on a particular paragraph or sentence. How could you cut the copy to meet the limit? It’s amazing how much hidden padding often remains. Another way of simplifying is to pretend you are writing a brochure rather than a web page and exercise your discipline and creativity to reduce the word count even further.

Need help getting your copy into shape? Eloquence Copywriting can turn it into clear and inspirational text.

Had any interesting experiences with deconstructing difficult copy? I'd love to hear them!

The Tyranny of the List: How to Break Free of Your ‘To Do’ List

‘To do’ lists are great things. They give us focus and remind us of things that require our immediate attention. They’re usually essential in any kind of work situation. And they’re absolutely indispensible in short and long-term goal setting.

But.

I’ve discovered that letting myself off the list-leash on a regular basis, including in work situations, can be a good thing. It helps me get more done in less time, and with far less strain and angst.

We’re always being told to work smarter rather than harder, but trying to do this using logic alone isn’t enough. Letting your gut feeling guide the form that your working day takes can have profound long-term benefits not just for your career but for the enjoyment you get from it.

If you’re fond of lists, or you want to become more spontaneous, it could be worthwhile to temporarily ditch your list, even for an hour or two, and let your intuition take control. (If you’re a bit chaotic and just starting to use lists to get more focused, it’s probably not a good idea – yet.)

Not that it’s easy. Truth to tell I’m addicted to my daily ‘to do’ list. Writing the list and then ticking the items off when I’ve completed them gives me a sense of comfort, security and achievement. Perhaps you’re the same. Sometimes not doing something that we feel strongly we need to do right away, even if intuition is telling us to leave it, can be excruciating.

A useful compromise I’ve found is to religiously write the ‘to do’ list in the diary I keep open on my desk. I consult the list in the morning, and if there are pressing deadlines, tasks, appointments and so on, I’ll attend to them. But everything else is up for grabs.

Benefits of spontaneity

Over the last two decades or so I’ve worked very hard to develop and trust my intuition – including in work situations. Many of my actions over the years resulted in putting much energy into particular career aims, goals or activities that weren’t right for me. All too often the form – getting something done and ticking it off – was more important than the worth (and sometimes timing) of the behaviour. I would complete a task or work towards a goal in a bloody-minded way, while failing to listen to the faint intimations that were gently telling me what I needed to be doing at that particular time.

I’m now much more intuitive, but this ability has been hard won.

These days I’m able to I write my ‘to do’ list and then partially (and occasionally completely) ignore it if my intuition’s telling me to do completely different things. In other words, if I start on a task and get a strong feeling that I need to be working on something else, I’ll go with it.

The results are interesting and occasionally startling.

When I ignore the list and follow the energy, things take less effort. When the right time comes to do a particular task, the energy and resources are magically there to do it. I might put off uploading a blog entry for a day or so only to find that some choice piece of information that will improve the entry comes my way. Or I’ll stop working on my Facebook page because I’m getting grumpy, and then return to the task the next morning and be amazed at how straightforward it seems. I’ll put off making some new social media step for a while because it seems overwhelming, and then suddenly feel the urge to do it and find that it’s really no big deal.

When you use your energy in this way, what you’re actually doing – without having to plan for it – is matching your mood and immediate circumstances to the task at hand. Your intuition always knows the mental and emotional resources you have available at the time, and can help you choose the right task to match them.

It also knows which tasks are really the most urgent. Intuition can actually help you prioritise if you let it.

Sometimes obeying your gut feeling in this way can be extremely uncomfortable. If you’re addicted to work and believe you need to work hard all the time, you may be surprised to find your intuition telling you to stop work earlier than usual. Yet the next morning you find yourself waking early with a huge surge of energy and commitment, and you achieve an amazing amount without really trying.

(This can occasionally work the other way – you feel you’ve done enough for the day, but something is niggling at you. You work out what it is, and spend an hour or so fixing something up that really needed doing.)

Beating procrastination

There’s a really big caveat here. Following your energy isn’t the same as procrastinating. There are some tasks that we’ll never actually want to do, emotionally speaking. Who is itching to complete their next tax return? Not me. But intuition acts on a deeper level than that. When the time comes to tackle the tax return, the energy you need will be available to help you make a start, even though you’d rather be stabbing your cheek with a toothpick.

In fact, once you get more confident in following your energy in this way, procrastination may actually reduce its hold on you. This is because you’ll trust yourself to complete difficult tasks in stages, and to finish them at the right time.

Ditching the ‘to do’ list can be especially valuable for creative thinking. We all know that the muse doesn’t turn up at scheduled times (although self-discipline encourages it – that’s a separate topic). Being willing to drop everything and write a blog entry or the opening paragraph of a Home page when inspiration strikes means you make the most of your creative energy.

An exercise for the list-addicted

If you’d like to be more spontaneous at work and see where your intuition takes you, why not experiment with ditching your ‘to do’ list? You don’t have to go all the way. You could write the list and then simply give yourself permission to ignore non-urgent items if necessary. Try doing one or two things on the list, and see how that feels. If you get the urge to start working on something else, go with it and see what happens.

Another option is to consciously ditch the list for a few hours (apart from obviously urgent tasks). Write it but give yourself a few hours off and do whichever tasks call to you, or don’t write it at all until halfway through the day.

The more daring option is to have an entire list-free day – scary but fun! Enjoy the ride!

Where you are with lists? Would you like to become more disciplined with using them, or are you trying to be a bit more spontaneous? Have you tried obeying your intuition in a work situation, and if so, what have the results been?

Addicted to Writing: What Copywriting Has in Common with Poetry

I have to admit something about copywriting – I do it because I have a terrible addiction. I love to write.

Before I even thought of becoming a copywriter I was a poet. My work appeared in some tiny literary journals, and in a couple of instances the Canberra Times. My poetry was rejected by many publications too, of course (including the Age newspaper).

I never hit the big time, and I never felt like a ‘real’ poet. A friend of mine won the Mary Gilmore Prize and the Queensland Premier's Prize for her collections of poetry, and was joint winner of The Age 1998 Poetry Book of the Year Prize. Some of her work was translated into German. I felt like a pretender compared with her.

Yet my muse, although inferior to my friend’s, visited me regularly. I wrote perhaps an average of one poem a week. Some of them I still like, but I was no Byron.

Then, around 2000, my poetry muse disappeared. And with a few one-off exceptions, it has never been seen again.

Part of the reason my muse fled the scene was that I started to learn to be a non-fiction copyeditor. It’s not hard to understand why this silenced my muse. I think my left brain grew more dominant, swamping the irrational, creative brain. It was still working of course, but the logical side was overpowering its messages before they could reach HQ.

I’m still an editor, but I added copywriting to my repertoire in 2008. This was unplanned, but a logical move given I had a background in journalism and publicity materials.

The creativity of copywriting

Although copywriting can’t make up for the loss of my poetry muse, I’ve definitely enjoyed the creative aspects. In fact, I’ve been surprised at just how creative copywriting feels sometimes – and how similar it can be to poetry writing!

I love the challenge and intellectual stimulation of editing, but I also appreciate the emotional, open-ended aspects of copywriting. To be honest, my writing brain isn’t that fussed about whether I’m producing a modern masterpiece or a jewellery catalogue. It just loves to put words together.

I want to be clear: copywriting is not poetry, and you’ll be in trouble if you try to pretend it is. A sonnet on the virtues of cloth nappies probably won’t sell any! You need to learn the ropes and use rational thought and information to write copy that’s relevant and engaging to the target market.

But there are some similarities between copywriting and poetry, which I’ve set out below – and these can shed some light on how to be a better copywriter.

Formal requirements

With formal poetry, you need to know the requirements of your chosen form. Whether it’s a sonnet, haiku, villanelle or Horatian ode, your creative brain must submit to those requirements. In the case of copywriting, everything you write must relate to the business, the particular product or service and the target market, and reflect your chosen tone. You also need to know the elements of effective copywriting, such as how to write door-busting headings.

Element of the irrational

All great poetry comes from a place of creativity that we humans still don’t properly understand. Copywriting is the same. Both draw on the creative parts of the brain. When I’m in the flow, phrases seem to come from nowhere. It feels effortless because my unconscious brain is doing all the work. For this reason it’s important to allow yourself some brainstorming time, and not to judge what initially flows from your pen.

Tone affects everything else

In a poem, how you say something is just as important as what you say. It’s not about content versus form: they’re intermingled. With copywriting, you must think about the tone you’re going to adopt before you start writing. This will also help determine other factors, such as the length of the copy, what information you include, and how you include it.

Each word matters

As we all know, audiences these days skim rather than read, so copy must be short and sweet. This means you can’t afford to waste even one word – they all have to work hard to sell the product or service. Poetry is the same – every word is carefully chosen for maximum effect, and for how it interacts with the other words.

Do you think there are poetic aspects to copywriting, or is it all about knowing what works?

Do you have a copywriting muse, and if so, how do you encourage it to make an appearance?

Proofreading Your Web Copy - An Editor's Tips

If you’re writing web copy for an online site, you’ll know already that it’s vital to proofread the copy before submitting it. As an editor I can offer some useful tips on proofreading your work effectively using Word. The most important tip I’ll give below.

Before you begin

Write the copy in a Word document (you can always strip it of formatting before uploading it if you need to). If I’m writing copy for more than one web page, I prefer to use the same file for the whole website, as it’s much easier to proofread.

If you do this, you’ll need to insert a page break between each separate piece of web copy, and clearly identify the web page each piece of copy is intended for.

Before you even begin to proofread your work, make sure you’re happy with it in terms of the copywriting and that the structure is sound.

Ask yourself if it fulfils the aims of the client.

Read it out loud to check whether it flows, has a logical progression and is easy for readers to follow.

Make sure you’ve broken it up with headings, bullet lists and so on.

Make sure the copy for each web page relates to the whole.

If time permits, it’s good to have a break between the writing and editing and the actual proofreading. Proofreading your own work is notoriously difficult, but even a day or two can add objectivity to your proofreading ‘eye’.

What you need to check

In proofreading, you need to check the copy for several features. The number-one key to effective proofreading is checking these things one at a time. In other words, go over the copy once for each check. Each time you do this is called a 'pass’. If you try to check everything at once you’ll probably miss some things. Of course, for some of these checks you won’t be reading the entire copy, just parts of it, eg headings.

Print out a hard copy of your work to make these checks. It’s a good idea to type up or write out your own list of items to check, and tick the items off for each web page once you’ve checked them. It might be helpful to create a table in Word or just draw it up in an exercise book, with rows on the left-hand side, one for each separate web page, and the items you need to check listed as column headings.

What you need to check will depend on the job and your own preferred method of working: some things will be second nature and won’t require a ‘pass’.

It’s a good idea to start with a read of the entire copy for grammar, punctuation or usage errors that the spellchecker may not pick up, eg ‘then’ instead of ‘than’, ‘it’s’ instead of ‘its’, ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’.

Below are some of the main items that it may be useful for you to check with a separate ‘pass’ – you may think of more.

Do the headings read well?

Are they grammatically correct?

Are they consistent in terms of heading level? Are they consistent in terms of case? If some headings have max caps, all headings in the same level should have max caps.

Is all the bulleted text consistent in terms of case (eg all sentence case, or all max caps)?

Have you included all the SEO keywords you need to include on each page?

Are the keywords in the right parts of the text (eg headings, first paragraph etc) and of the right density?

Are the paragraphs too long?

Are the sentences too long?

Have you included all the information required?

Have you used the correct spelling for any company names or technical terms?

Is there any needless repetition?

Using Word for final proofreading checks

When you’ve made any changes following these proofreading checks, it’s time to do global corrections on screen. Word makes this very easy.

First, do a spell check. Then Use the Find and Replace function. The shortcut for this in Word 7 is Ctrl F, or you can access the function by clicking the Find tab in the Editing group on the Home menu, on the top far right. You’re going to use this function to clean up your document.

Call up the Find function, and click on the Replace tab. There will be two dialogue boxes: ‘Find what’ and ‘Replace with’. To get rid of double spaces, type in two spaces in the ‘Find what’ box and one space in the ‘Replace with’ box. Now click the ‘Replace all’ button below.

Keep doing this until you are told no replacements were made. You’ve now replaced all your double spaces with single spaces! Use this function to get rid of:

• Space before a comma: In the ‘Find what’ box, type in a space followed by a comma; in the ‘Replace with’ box, type in a comma with no space in front of it; now keep clicking the ‘Replace all’ button until no replacements were made


• Space before a colon or semicolon: In the ‘Find what’ box, type in a space followed by a colon or semicolon; in the ‘Replace with’ box, type in a colon or semicolon with no space in front of it; now click the ‘Replace all’ button until no replacements were made


• Space before a full stop: In the ‘Find what’ box, type in a space followed by a full stop; in the ‘Replace with’ box, type in a full stop with no space in front of it; now keep clicking the ‘Replace all’ button until no replacements were made


• Space at the beginning of a paragraph: In the ‘Find what’ box, type in a paragraph mark followed by a space (to insert a paragraph mark, hit the More tab and then the Special tab, and choose Paragraph mark from the dropdown list); in the ‘Replace with’ box, type in a paragraph mark with no space after it; now keep clicking the ‘Replace all’ button until no replacements were made


• Spaces before a paragraph mark: this cleans up the document for typesetters or web designers; in the ‘Find what’ box, type in a space followed by a paragraph mark and in the ‘Replace with’ box, type in a paragraph mark with no space in front of it; now click the ’Replace all’ button until no replacements were made.

As an extra precaution I always do a final read of the copy on the screen before I send it.

Got any proofreading tips that you find indispensible in your copywriting? Please feel free to comment! If you'd like to find out more about the web copywriting, editing and and proofreading services I offer, please go to my website.

Is Short and Sweet the Way to Go for Website Copy?

Nowadays, with so many people using smartphones and tablets, commercial web copy needs to be incredibly concise. For introductory pages such as a Home or landing page, some say a maximum of 350 words on a page is all that’s needed. Others believe that one or two key sentences that sum up what the company offers are quite sufficient.

Even where potential customers aren't using smartphones and tablets, copy that’s too long may fall victim to the notorious short attention span of internet users, who skim rather than read. They may not stay on the page long enough to reach the end of the page, and your call to action.

So how do you convey all the information you need to while keeping your key introductory pages brief? Below are some tips that can help.

Think about both content and design. Before you begin to write, set out a summary of the information you need to convey. Then check out a range of websites and think about how you’d like your site to work. This will depend on the needs of your target market; for some businesses, clear text and a sparse design will do wonders, while for others, few words and a bold design that’s closely integrated with the text will communicate best with customers.

Plan how to structure your information. Once you’ve decided on the information you need to convey and have some ideas about design, decide how you will break up the information. Depending on your needs you could divide your web pages into, say, types of products, or different services, venues or cities. You might also have subpages (eg individual product pages with detailed specs). You might want different pages for different target markets such as residential and business customers. Some of your pages might be based on SEO terms.

Present detailed information in ways that are user-friendly. There are many options for providing detailed information. A FAQ page is a great place to put background information that’s too detailed for the intro pages. Some background information is better on its own page; for example, you might want a separate page for pricing, or a ‘How it works’ page for a service readers are unfamiliar with. The ‘About Us’ information can be divided into separate pages if it’s too long; you might want to put Mission and Values on its own subpage, for instance. Make detailed information easy to find with links, both embedded in the copy and on sidebars and at the top.

Use your intro copy to focus on the benefits of your product or service. Start off from where your customers are. Be empathic about their needs, wants and desires and use ‘you’ much more than ‘we’. Ask yourself what kind of tone your customers will respond to, and talk to them on their terms. Once you’ve focused on the benefits of your product or service, tell them how your company can provide those benefits, but be brief. You don’t have the space to waffle – you can always provide links to more detailed information.

Edit your copy. With a strict word limit there’s no room for repetition or saying the same thing slightly differently (notice I just did exactly that!). Think of your intro copy as poetry – every word has to contribute to the overall effect, in this case your appeal to your customer. Read over your work carefully; ruthlessly cut out any information that would be better elsewhere, and reduce the length of copy that could be written more precisely.

What do you think about the trend to very short home page copy? Can readers cope with longer copy if it’s well structured? Please feel free to comment.

Secret Copywriting Tip: One Way of Brainstorming Great Copy

Much of the advice about keeping your copywriting lively and compelling is taken from the world of creative writing. This is no surprise - whether the writing is commercial or not, for the best results you need to harness  the amazing capacities of your unconscious mind. As a copywriter, I'm still learning about the incredible power of the unconscious to come up with ideas.

This doesn't mean not using your rational mind. When starting a new job, it's a good idea to gather all the information you need and then let it filter through. Take a break and give your unconscious time to produce the ideas for you.

Going for a walk or run is one way of giving your mind the chance to come up with great ideas. Leveraging the juggling that takes place when you work for yourself also helps, eg by simply working on another job that's at a later stage of development.

A secret method for producing great copywriting ideas

When I'm dreaming up concepts and headlines for a particular page I sometimes do something a bit different - it works for me, and I'd be interested to know if it works for anyone else.  I watch TV.

I choose a program that's fairly mindless, and use it as background. I sit down with plenty of paper and a pen, focus on the aims of the web page I'm working on, and jot down ideas. (Clients, don't panic: I don't charge for this time!)

Some of the ideas I produce at this stage will end up as headings. Some will become catchphrases, and some will become part of the body text. Of course, much won't come up to scratch, while other ideas will need to be tested and many will eventually be rejected. But I always end up with plenty of copywriting 'gold'.

How does this work? I suspect it's because the images on the TV help to block my rational mind.  This  leaves my unconscious mind free to dream up creative phrases. And because the shows I choose aren't intellectually demanding nor the images that compelling, I still have enough brain space left over to produce worthwhile ideas.

If you try this, bear in mind that what you're doing is simply brainstorming. When you brainstorm, it's important not to censor the writing or worry about whether the phrases are any good. Just get them down. You can go through and evaulate them later.

Everyone's brain works differently. While brainstorming is an important stage for all writers, it may not work for you to do it in front of TV - why not try it and see? (But remember to choose something brainless - if the show is too absorbing, you'll have no brain space left!)

Clearing out the muck

Whether or not you brainstorm with some stimulus in the background (music is another option), there is a stage in brainstorming that seems to be necessary before the good stuff comes out. 

I find that when I begin brainstorming what I produce is  pretty ordinary. I just keep going, letting myself jot down everything that comes to mind even if I think it's no good. And then gradually the original, fresh stuff starts to emerge. I have to get the mental 'sludge' out of the way before the gems emerge from the muck.

So when you start brainstorming, don't expect to produce  great stuff straight away. Let your mind clear itself of the junk first.

You also need to have enough information to make the brainstorming effective. As well as the aim of the web page and the needs of the target market, you might also like to read up on some instructional material, eg tips for producing great headings.

If you try to skip this rational stage you may produce stuff that is creative and eye catching but just not right for the target  market or the aims of the web page or website. It's a bit like writing a sonnet - you need to know the correct format for  a sonnet before you start writing, otherwise you'll come up with great lines that you can't use.

Better go - have to catch up on the latest episode of Masterchef (and brainstorm some great headings!).