Where the question is asked:
Hi Ben,
Not sure why I haven’t emailed you sooner (maybe cause I’m scared the great email copywriting legend will humble me too much with this idiotic email haha), but I just wanted to say that I love your emails. I find value in them, like, 99% of the time. I’ve had eureka moments just from your free content, which is insane. I want to buy your books, but here’s my thing:
I trust that your teachings work, but I am not sure I can trust myself to implement them.
What would you say to someone like me? I think I’m good at writing… But executing what I learn is hard.
I tend to be timid, maybe because I don’t always know what I’m doing or my mind is blank. Really just depends on the day I guess LOL.
You’re the copywriter that I always come back to, and I always wonder how you know so much and come up with such amazing content. I aspire to be an email copywriter like yourself (not copying you, of course LOL), but I really think your content is gold. Also, I vibe with your bluntness and agree with you on many things. I’m a Christian also, and I appreciate you being bold and also touching on some topics even normie Christians wouldn’t.
Anyway, again, love your stuff.
The last kind of person I’m going to “humble” is someone asking a sincere question.
It’s the spittle-on-the-carpet snark bois who I have fun with.
But as for her question:
If you make writing fun, you don’t have to motivate yourself, trick yourself, or otherwise manipulate/coax yourself into getting work done any more than someone who likes watching TV and finds it fun has to be motivated, tricked, or coaxed into watching TV.
When it comes to email:
If it ain’t fun to write, then throw it out and find something that is fun to write about. After all, if it ain’t fun for you to write, it won’t be fun for anyone else to read.
Enthusiasm “trickles down.”
It’s why, for example, I have never once been tempted to use fapGPT to write with.
That’s almost like outsourcing watching my favorite movies to Grok.
I want to experience the writing, not hide from it like the generative AI crowd.
Writing is fun, exciting, and the ultimate rush if you do it right (or write).
This email I am writing now is the fourth one I’ve written today (I write a lot of my emails in batches). And it’s not work, it’s play. I woke up this morning eager to get to it, especially since I just spent the last several days tediously editing audio for a 10-hour course about a topic I’m launching next year.
I was up at 3:15’ish am and working within 30 minutes having the time of my life.
It’s not a “chore” to write these emails, it’s a privilege.
It’s like eating dessert first.
In many ways, for me at least, it’s also therapy.
Will not explain.
More:
Later this year I’m wanting to get back into writing fiction. Fiction is a lot harder than writing emails. It can be a lot more nerve-wracking too, because of the uncertainty aspect to it. In the introduction to my newly updated Zombie Cop novel (the one I have free in the Enoch Wars mobile app) I put it like this:
“It’s a strange phenomenon that is as nerve-racking (not knowing the ending and hoping it’ll be good) as it is exhilarating (also not knowing the ending and hoping it’ll be good).”
This is not something to avoid, it’s something to chase.
Anyway, I don’t know if this helps anyone else or not.
The vast majority of people want to “have written” but not actually write.
That is why fapGPT, AI, etc is so popular.
It reminds me of a scene in the movie “Warrior” between Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte. Tom plays a guy about to compete in an MMA tournament and wants his ex-alcoholic and wife-abusing father (Nolte) to train him. He hates his dad, but he also knows his dad is the best trainer for him.
So Tom walks into a diner to meet with his dad to discuss his training.
And his dad immediately says:
“Hand ‘em over right now. I know they’re on you, Tommy. You sounded like a goddamn maraca coming through the door.”
Tommy reaches into his pocket and slides two bottles across the table.
i.e., performance enhancing drugs.
His dad then says: “This is for losers and old men.”
That’s the perfect analogy for generative so-called AI for writers.
Forget all that shyt and just sac up and write.
If you have doubts as we all do at times, confidence problems as we all do at times, or think you won’t be any good as we all do at times… well, guess what? Just means you’re a flawed human being like the rest of us. And all that doubt and head trash can only make your writing better and more human if you harness it, instead of trying to fight it.
Don’t worry if it’s good, bad, fugly, or anything else.
Just do the work, every day, whether you “feel” like it or not or have time or not.
That’s what separates the winners… from the terminally online using generative AI.
End of pep talk.
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Ben Settle
