I Copied a Year's Worth of Seth Godin's Writing in a Week.

After doing a sprint of writing, my brain was on fire, full of ideas. My body was already in motion. And because I identified a few writing qualities I wanted to emulate from Seth, I had a set of very clear constraints to work within. This helped me focus on sharing my idea, rather than thinking about the form it would take.

I created my first post for this exercise, in under two hours. And I was happy with it. It was the fastest I’ve ever written and published something. To be honest, the majority of that time was spent selecting the right cover image. It wasn’t even the writing.

I felt the same magic when writing my second and third articles.

The results of my one-week writing challenge

After a week doing this writing assignment, I was able to copy a total of 102 blog posts from Seth Godin

While I’m very short of the original goal of 365 entries, I am not disappointed at all. And that’s because I learned so much during this week. About myself, about Seth Godin’s writing style, and how much production I can crank out in a short amount of time under constraint.

Observations of Seth Godin’s writing style

After going through so much of Seth’s writing, I recognized a lot of patterns and formulas he uses. Here are a few things I’ve observed:

Paradigm shift. Seth uses each post to shift your paradigm. Taking something you think you know, and invites you to look at it from a different perspective. I thought this was a powerful way to engage a reader.

Every post by him has this intent in mind. Knowing this helped me focus my writing, to make it purpose-driven. This also improved my ability to be a ruthless editor of my work, and strip down to only the essential words needed to communicate a thought.

Response to the title. Seth often uses an intriguing title that pulls you in. Once he’s hooked you, he often responds to his title in the first line of the post. Like a comedian setting up a joke, then delivering the punch line. Seth uses this technique to delight the reader and draw them in closer.

Master of line breaks. Just like a designer uses negative space, Seth uses line breaks to emphasize, pause, or create a dramatic shift in his writing. Something that I became more conscious of when it comes to how I compose my thoughts on a blank page.

These were just a few of the many that I’ve observed and emulated.

A new process developed

The beautiful thing about this challenge is that it forced me to create a system for learning. Rules to follow. A commitment to keep. And a better way to make sense of information, and apply it.

As I went through this process, I documented everything in Notion, to keep track of my progress. For each post, I rewrote everything word for word. I took notes on the key takeaways, and any patterns I observed in Seth’s writing style.

I also took meta notes about my personal reactions and emotional state. At the end of each day, I wrote a reflection log. Summarizing 3 things I learned. What I could do better tomorrow. And my closing thoughts.

My process in 4 steps:

1. Intentional consumption. I read each post with a clear goal in mind: to extract a lesson, and to make observations about Seth’s writing style. Actively seeking information helped me pay attention to what I was reading, versus just copying it.

2. Distilling and reflection. I took notes to summarize what I learned in every post, which forced me to recall the information I had just read. This greatly helped with the retention issues I ran into at the beginning. I also took notes on my thoughts and feelings, which helped me make adjustments to my process.

3. Creation. The most important part of my process was the application of what I learned. The moment I started writing my articles, emulating Seth’s style of writing, I committed to memory what I had been copying and observing. That’s because I went from passive learning to active learning. The most effective way to retain information.

4. Adjust. When you design a new system to follow, you have to make iterative adjustments to improve its effectiveness. When I noticed that chasing a daily quota of 52 entries became counter-productive towards my goal, I changed my process to focus on the quality of consumption, not the quantity. This adjustment greatly improved my relationship with the exercise and what I got out of it.

Unexpected afterglow

During this one week challenge, I published 3 original articles. That’s as much as I normally do in a whole year.

And even though the challenge is over, I’ve experienced a bit of an afterglow effect from it. I still feel the itch to read, to write, and make. It’s like the ink from my pen can’t stop flowing, and I have to get something on paper.

Since completing this writing challenge, I wrote 6 more posts in the following week.

In other words, my writing productivity is exponentially higher because I developed a habit and have momentum I’m building on.

I’m so happy with the results of this challenge, that I’m continuing this exercise, with a new author to learn from (“The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield). I know there’s much I can learn in between the pages of this book.

If you want to become a better writer, I highly recommend Copywork as an exercise. It’s an easy and effective way to build momentum and learn. If you do plan to take this challenge on, don’t feel obligated to do it all in a week. Take it slow, give it time, and focus on building the habit of practice. Also, make sure to reflect on and apply what you learn.

I’d like to leave you with this quote I read from Seth Godin’s blog about writer’s block, which has encouraged me to write more in public:

“Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure. Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better. Do it every day. Every single day. If you know you have to write something every single day, even a paragraph, you will improve your writing. If you’re concerned with quality, of course, then not writing is the problem, because zero is perfect and without defects. Shipping nothing is safe.”

- Seth Godin