Why the most laid-off copywriter I know did everything "right"

Two years ago, a former coworker who used to run a really popular horror blog dropped a quote into conversation that intrigued me.

She was talking about Stephen King and mentioned something he called being a "pantser."

I'd never heard that before.

It's King's idea that there are two types of writers.

The first is the kind that plans everything out and nothing is spontaneous.

The second is the "pantser," the one that "writes by the seat of their pants". No formal outline. No rigid structure. The one that lets the story breathe, evolve, and find its own shape organically.

Fun fact: Tolkien was a pantser. Lord of the Rings was a byproduct of his love of languages. The entire story and world of LOTR was designed as a context for Tolkien's elvish languages. He wrote the stories after he developed his fictional languages and in many places spontaneously wrote what came to him.

Imagine that. One of the greatest worlds ever written was never really planned.

I didn't know it at the time, but that one offhand quote about being a pantser sent me down a rabbit hole that completely changed how I write copy and how I view writing overall.

Here's what most copywriters do.

They read and collect copywriting books. They hand-copy successful pre-internet ads. They study modern ads. They split-test. They dissect landing pages and swipe files. All useful. None of it wrong. I do and have done all of these things myself.

But there's a ceiling you hit when your entire creative diet is just business and marketing content. Being that cookie-cutter is a liability these days, where the market shifts every two to three years due to technology and the old school, hard knocks way of doing things doesn't always work anymore.

Readers are seasoned, sophisticated, and demand more than boring corporate copy.

Case in point: I had a conversation with a FAANG copywriter about a year ago. He was working for Facebook on a contractual basis, making around $100,000 a year. Not bad.

But with more digging I found out he had been laid off five times in the past decade.

None of it his fault. He did everything senior copywriters tell newbies to do. He went to a decent state university, studied journalism, and had a portfolio. He was straight-laced and colored within the lines. By all means he's what most copywriters would think is a successful copywriter.

But he could not hold on to job security for the life of him.

Perplexing, isn't it? A copywriter who did everything right, laid off essentially every two years for the past decade, with no idea when the next layoff was coming.

He should have been making way more than that, working way less than that. Should have been way happier, probably with his own brand or business by that point.

Unfortunately when you become too formulaic and corporate as a copywriter, you lose your edge. When you write for others and never for yourself, you start to sound like every other copywriter. Competent, but forgettable. Technically clean, but emotionally hollow. And eventually, that leads to your forced early retirement.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's been laid off again since or then or left the industry entirely.

Want to guess what his missing ingredient was? Creativity. Storytelling. The kind that pulls you into a world, into a real page-turner. Like when we were kids, wrapped up in a blanket with a nightlight.

The people who've cracked that storytelling code, the ones making seven to eight figures, aren't just in the copy world. They're screenwriters. Directors. Fiction writers.

After my coworker's Stephen King moment, I started pulling from different shelves. Screenwriting theory. Directing philosophy. Fiction books. Even photography. All in an effort to stay creatively diverse and learn how to tell proper stories.

I'm not even that big of a King fan, but he's one of the few authors who documented his entire writing process in a book.

His book On Writing is one of the most practical, honest breakdowns of the craft that exists. Get a copy.

Here are a few things that stand out when you read it through a copy lens.

Telepathy, not persuasion. King describes writing as telepathy, transporting the reader into your world using nothing but words. That's what great copy actually does. You're not pushing someone toward a decision. You're placing them inside an experience.

Your reader finishes the picture. King says description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's head. Most copywriters over-explain. They spell out every feature, every benefit, every outcome. King's approach: give the reader enough to activate their own imagination, then get out of the way.

Fear is why copy goes flat. King argues that most bad writing comes from fear, fear of the reader's reaction, fear of sounding stupid, fear of taking a real position. It's the same reason most copy is corporate, vague, and forgettable. The antidote isn't confidence for its own sake. It's truth. Say what needs to be said and say it.

Writing is refined thinking. The act of writing copy isn't just execution. It's how you figure out what you actually believe about the product, the customer, and the problem you're solving. The copy gets better when the thinking gets sharper.

Show up to the page like it matters. One of King's most repeated ideas: you must not come lightly to the blank page. That's the difference between a copywriter who treats it like a task to complete and one who treats it like a conversation worth having.

It strangely sounds like copy advice, right? Despite King not being a copywriter?

The point is, copywriting books and material will teach you structure and fundamentals. Swipe files will teach you patterns. Hand-copying is useful for beginners. Don't abandon or skip the foundations.

But if you want to write copy that actually moves people, copy that makes thousands of people spend $10 on opening day, copy that makes them feel something before they decide something, you have to study the writers outside the copywriting world who've dedicated their lives to exactly that.

People ultimately buy through emotion. They may rationalize it a million times, but if the final push is never emotional, whether that's wealth, freedom, a dream physique, a luxurious lifestyle, health, or something else entirely, you won't get the sale.

Read the screenwriters. Study the directors. Study why they put certain things into frame and omit others. Look at BTS set pieces, the costumes, the effects, the CGI, how everything comes together. Pay attention to how and why world-builders make you care about the worlds and characters they've created.

Then bring all of that back to your copy.

Today, I actively try to be more like a "panster". And my simple process is that I write down the ideas that come to me(in bullet form). Old stories, new movies, gossip and controversy, anything that lifts an eyebrow.

I jot it casually down, whether it's on a napkin at lunch, or on a walk or just on my phone during a lull period, before I ever write the copy on my laptop. Then I write the copy around my 3 bullet notes. As a result I'm always in a state of creative flow, always have something to write about, and always have fun doing it.

And It leads to less stress, less worry, ironically more structure, a business that is rapidly and casually growing and ultimately more sales.

Now I'm going to go spend my Saturday morning watching some ASOIAF lore videos.

Hope you're working hard, playing hard, and resting hard too.

Till next Saturday,

Fathi.