I must have got your attention with this one. After all, as bloggers, we celebrate originality.

We despise bloggers who are just plain copycats of other successful bloggers, and we admire the top bloggers for their freshness and originality.

So we say, “copying is a recipe for failure.”

Not true.

You’ve already read the article about Mozart, the great music composer, being a copycat. (If you have not, read it here.)

The fact is, all masters of every field were once newbies, and the way most of them learned their craft was by the unpopular technique of…

Copying.

E.g. Tiger Woods copied his father, and then imitated his coaches who were former pros of his time.

Michael Jackson copied from other great dancers like Bob Fosse during his early days.

Even great copywriters like John Carlton learned their skills by copying other great copywriters (maybe that’s why it’s called copy-writing, lol…)

Michael Masterson recently talked about this in his newsletter. I’ll quote what he wrote:

Aristotle, perhaps the greatest of all thinkers, called this process mimesis.

Here is what he said about it in Poetics:

“Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation.”

Then Michael went on to describe how his friend imitated a great writer called H.L. Mencken, and how his early attempts to copy him were obvious and awkward. But the more he did it, the better he got.

Eventually within three years, he developed his own version of the craft and became a bestselling, prize-winning author.

And here’s the key. You are not going to copy forever. You copy so that you can arrive at a level where you can be original.

You see, whenever we start to learn something, as beginners, we know next to nothing about the craft.

We only have a general idea of the technique, what is good technique and what is bad. But we often don’t have a clear understanding of why and how to become good at it.

Take copywriting for example.

You probably have a general idea of what is good salesletter. It’s one with a attention-grabbing headline, evokes your emotions and compels you to take action.

But that does not mean you understand why it is good salesletter, and how you can write a good one.

You have to learn it. And the fastest and most effective way for a beginning to learn the skill of writing salescopy is… guess what?

Copy great copywriters.

That’s right. Copy their salesletters by hand, word for word, as practice.

I’m not inventing this idea. Many top copywriters first learned how to write by copying great salescopy. In fact, that’s how people were taught to write for centuries. Again, quoting Michael Masterson:

Did you ever wonder how your grandmother — with just a high school education — was able to write such beautiful, thoughtful letters? It’s because copying the great writers of her day, by hand, was part of her regular schoolwork.

We no longer employ mimesis in teaching writing. It went out of style in the late 1960s. That’s when the idea of letting children “express themselves” swept through the American education system.

As a result, our generation has became both semi-literate and ignorant of many great works of literature. This is a tragedy that has worsened over time.

It’s sad to know that the most effective way of learning writing is being despised in our present day.

But I’m thankful that at least I’ve been exposed to mimesis before, albeit to a small degree. In my country Singapore, the way we learn and memorize Chinese characters is by copying them, stroke by stroke, and doing so repetitively until we can write them without thinking.

It’s called Rote Learning. Learning by copying and practicing the same thing again and again. By doing so, you quickly create permanent motor pathways in your brain, which is what happens when you learn and master a skill. The more developed the network of motor pathways in your brain, the more well-developed your skill becomes.

It’s similar to how people learn martial arts. You copy from the master, then you practice the same kick, the same punch, the same moves, again and again until you can do it well.

(But at the same time, we are taught in school that copying is downright wrong, when we are already using the copying method as the fastest way to learn a skill. How ironic.)

You and I should bring mimesis and rote learning back into our lives.

We should copy (ok, model) the A-list bloggers, how they write, the topics they choose, the plugins they use, the way they monetise the blog, how they do their marketing and promotions, etc.

Eventually, you become very competent in the skill of blogging and you understand deeply how it works. That’s the time when you start developing your own style and angle. That’s the time when you start differentiating yourself by being…

Original.

(Read the previous two sentences again. It’s important.)

Most master copywriters do just that for copywriting. Like I said before, they start out copying the works of other great copywriters, then only and only when they have become very competent, do they start differentiating themselves with their own style.

AWAI (American Writers & Artists Inc) is a copywriting school started by Michael Masterson, and one of his core methods was to have the students read and copy the works of the great copywriters of the day.

The list of master copywriters he mentored in his school and who used mimesis to further their careers includes Clayton Makepeace … John Forde … John Carlton … Bob Bly … Paul Hollingshead … and Don Mahoney.

(As a side note, John Carlton calls himself the most ripped-off copywriter, maybe because he knows that as a master copywriter himself, other people are going copy and imitate him, so he’s going to be ripped-off anyway, lol…)

By the way, I’ve just enrolled into his copywriting school. I believe that copywriting and blog writing have a lot in common, and I know that my writing skills is going to be a very important key to my success as a blogger, so I’ve taken the plunge and started my first lesson.

And guess what my first exercise is? You got it – copy a great salesletter.

Here’s what Michael Masterson says about copying or rote learning,

Rote exercises are more than just memorization. They teach you on a deeper level. Through the exercises you’ll be doing in this program, your ear will develop a sense of what good copy sounds like. Your mind will instinctively know when copy is powerful and when it’s weak. You’ll be able to carry these senses over to your own work.

Many of my friends and former colleagues have commented that I write pretty well. As I reflect on this, I guess it was because I read many great salesletters on the web. It gave me a general idea of what good writing sounds like. And it looks like I’m already experiencing what Michael Masterson is saying to a certain degree.

So if I were to read and copy great salesletters, I will become much better at this instinct and carry it over to my writing.

Why don’t you do the same? If you are not comfortable with salesletters, you can read the blogs with great writing, and…

Copy the blog articles by hand.

Some great blogs you can start with are Copyblogger, Men with Pens, Steve Pavlina, and Yaro Starak.

And don’t just copy it for the sake of copying it. As you write out the sentences, think about how each sentence is constructed, what kinds of words are used, what kind of images comes to mind, how the writing makes you feel, etc.

When you do that, you’ll develop a keener sense of good writing and bring it over to your own blog.

If you are planning to become a top blogger in your chosen niche, you should read the top blogs in your niche and copy by hand what they are writing.

The more you do that, the better you understand why they write what they write. Then the better you know your common target audience, and the better you get at writing relevant articles to serve their needs. Also, you should…

Copy their topics.

The top blogs arrived at where they are because they have a keen sense of what kind of topics resonate with your market. Don’t plagiarize, but write about the same topics they cover.

Then when you have become very familiar the market, you can start introducing ideas that have a higher chance of being accepted by your readers, because you understand them deeply and you know instinctively what will resonate with your audience.

For me, I realized that some of the ideas I write may be out of touch for you. So I’m shifting my overall strategy. I’m going to copy Yaro Starak.

So from now on, I’ll write more about the topics that he writes to appeal to you and to a wider audience. How does that sound to you?