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Improve your writing with an imaginary critique.

I was working recently with one of my coaching clients and asked him to write a new version of his home page.

He was taking the marketing of his business in a whole new direction. He had new goals to aim for and needed his home page to align with those goals and express a message and promise that were very different.

Once he was done, he sent me the page and asked me what I thought.

At first I forgot I was his coach and started behaving as if he were a copywriting client. That is to say, I started to write a critique of his page.

Then I stopped myself. And I wrote back to him with a simple question, "What points do you think I'll take issue with on this page?"

The first thing that happened was that he wrote me a quick email with an observation about an apparently evil side to my personality.

But then, less than 24 hours later, he sent me a revised version of the page.

Now for the interesting part.

He had changed and improved 90% of the areas where I was going to take him to task.

That's a pretty remarkable turnaround, based entirely on critiquing his own work.

My next step was to print out some work I had just completed for a client of my own. I had already proofed it and was about to send it. Instead, I sat back and took a close look at what I had done.

And yes, I found a few areas in which I could improve it. In particular, the headline needed work.

This is scary stuff. I have been a copywriter for almost 30 years now. How much of my work could and should have been better? I don't mean that every job I ever did should have been the best of its kind in the world, ever. But I do mean that it should have been the best that I was capable of doing.

For me, this short coaching exercise has opened a new door.

From now on you can be sure that I'll not only proof my work before submitting it, but I'll also critique it.

To help myself, I think I'll imagine showing it to a mentor I had during my early years in this business. And I'll ask myself, "What would he say about this page of copy?"

Somewhere inside ourselves I think we all have the capacity to critique what we are doing, and then take action and make improvements.

It's just a matter of opening the door and giving voice and volume to that inner critic.

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