Back in college, I was explaining to a professor, in great detail, how I was eventually going to write my term paper. I explained I had it all thought out and I just needed to sit down and write it. Easy.

His response was, “If you haven’t haven’t written it, you haven’t thought it.” How asinine was he? Of course, I had it figured out – for I was a brilliant undergrad.

What he meant was that I couldn’t have made all the logical connections for my paper until I actually mapped them out on paper. What I had done then was just create fragments of the final piece. And once I actually started writing and developing a cohesive piece, I could see how right he was. There were some glaring holes that I actually didn’t have figured out and there was more work to be done than a realized.

Since I started teaching, I have had student after student has come to class with the work less than fleshed out. They all tell me they’ve got it all figured out, but haven’t yet gotten to actually writing the headline or the script. I now feel my erstwhile professors pain.

If you haven’t written the headlines, you won’t know if they’ll work in multiple media. If you haven’t nailed the tagline, you won’t know if it makes sense placed in the comps next to the logo. And if you haven’t written the body copy you won’t be positive that it will fit into the layout with all copy points included. And most of all, you won’t really know if your idea is great or just so so. Great work takes work. That why it’s called work. And is only rarely called great.

So get over yourself and get writing. Doing the work and thus making your ideas brilliance obvious is a lot easier that arguing the brilliance of a blank piece of paper.

Posted on: February 19, 2015, by : Jimmy Gilmore