Shut your ears and your eyes.
Place yourself on a mantle above all others, for you are the king of their domain.
That was an alternative, and far longer, headline for this post that I chose to shelve. It wouldn't have done it justice either, so I ditched it for both practicality and the fact it was bollocks. The actual headline is better, and complete would look like this:
If all you read is copy, copy is all you'll write.
I know a lot of copywriters. It's one of the perils of being a copywriter myself. You find yourself having discussions about Oxford commas over drinks and questioning the use of hyphenation on a Friday night. But while those pitfalls can be a bit of a downer, spending time with other people who do your job can be a great way to evolve. You see things from a different perspective and learn from each other's mistakes, as well as gaining a great understanding that you really are the only cog that matters in the creative engine.
That's all good, but this ain't about what's good - this is about what's shit.
If all I did was spend time with other copywriters, my copywriting would become awful. My only source of inspiration would be other bits of copy, my only reference points would be what other people had written and my only ideas would come from the ideas that other people had already thought of. It'd be torturous to live through and even more torturous to read.
Don't do it. The world would become boring.
Make your writing better by focusing on things that don't use words. Look at more pictures, get chummy with designers, go to an illustration exhibition, complete a Fifa 96 sticker album. The choice is yours. Spend a minimum amount of time reading other bits of copy, because eventually you'll end up writing more of the same kind of crap.
People don't want to read copy; they want to read writing. Great writers didn't find their inspiration from other great writers. Wonderful poets didn't spend time reading the works of their contemporaries. Their work came from looking at things outside of their comfort zone, expanding their minds to absorb new ways of thinking and doing things that others in their field weren't doing.
Groove Armada put it best - If everybody looked the same, we'd get tired of looking at each other.
So, to summarise...
Like fuck will I be paying £250 to attend the copywriting conference I was invited to. I'll go do something different instead.