Rewriting as Art; Why Copywriters Need to Rewrite
By Deborah Olusegun
This article you’re reading was rewritten.
As I’m sure was every other valuable text you’ve come across today.
Even Chimamanda, one of the greatest 21st-century novelists rewrites.
The truth is if you’d seen this post in its initial form, you won’t look at it twice and you’ll probably blacklist me.
Which goes to show the beauty in the art of rewriting.
With rewriting, mindless scribbles and hard-to-understand jottings can be expanded upon to become better.
In her autobiography, Audre Lorde wrote about rewriting her poems. She could rewrite a poem several times especially when they were being republished.
In a K-Drama series I watched, an artist tells his student that being able to redraw a shape in 7 to 13 different forms was a mark of excellence.
Rewriting. Redrawing. Redoing.
The magic lies in doing things after the first time, in trying your hands again at something that did not make sense the first time you wrote it.
One of my Rewriting Stories
Recently, a friend sent a poem draft to me. I thought he asked me to edit it, so I dropped comments with such fervor that will make an editor proud. When I sent it back to him, he told me that it wasn’t his work and he thought it was mine that was why he sent it.
I went back to check the document again and turns out it was truly mine. I had written the poem when I was an undergrad — about me and my mum.
At first, I felt embarrassed for not recognizing my work, then I felt shame for how bad my writing was, and finally, I felt a sense of pride that my writing had gotten better.
I had become a writer who earned her keep with writing and who could edit her previous works.
What does Rewriting Mean for Copywriters?
There is no secret recipe in the secret recipe scroll.
What separates great writers from mediocre ones is that they write again. They make tweaks here and there, edit, and have the courage to confront subpar work in a bid to make it better.
As copywriters, to rewrite is to realize that nothing we create to market a product comes out perfect at first. And in our world, it isn’t adding fancy words and making the vocabulary complex that sells products
It’s mostly removing fancy words, breaking down the complex, and providing context that gives us desired results.
It’s applying customer research, writing in everyday language, and bridging the gap with our words.
For us, writing is to express as opposed to hiding, it’s to say clearly what we mean.
There is no space for ambiguity or smartness or showing off our college degrees that prove we read over a hundred books on literature and language.
So, you want to become a better copywriter? Become a copywriter who rewrites.
