Living the Writer's Life:
EG Orren
By Mindy McHorse

EG takes advantage of her unlimited freedom as a copywriter by traveling for long stretches through some of North America’s most beautiful
national parks and natural wonders.

EG Orren’s writing business shot out of the gate in the early years of the pandemic. She claimed her independence from the beginning, often working from picturesque camping grounds throughout Canada. I chatted with EG via Starlink from her latest post in the Canadian Rockies southwest of Calgary, Alberta, where she was volunteering for a week at a camp designed for older adults and disabled people. Enjoy reading about her fruitful writing journey.

How did you discover copywriting?

EG spent almost two months at Dillberry Lake
Provincial Park on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border.
(Her campsite turned out to be a black bear corridor
till she set up a solar-powered motion-activated light.).

I first heard the term “copywriting” in April 2020. The pandemic hit and the world shut down, and Ryan Deiss of DigitalMarketer released his Lab courses for free for a month. So I started going through all those courses, and I’ll be honest: I wasn’t doing them for the sake of learning, because I’ve been involved in online advertising since before phones were smart and Google was a verb.

The very first thing I did in those Lab courses was something called Digital Response Copywriting. Pam Foster taught it on behalf of AWAI. Everything she said, I’m like, “What do you mean? I’m already doing that. I’ve done that in jobs. You mean I can get paid for that?” So that put AWAI on my radar, and I signed up for the newsletter. From there I jumped into the first launch party.

How did you land clients?

Again, blame Pam Foster. She’s like, “It’s Day Four. Now you’re going to start telling people.” So I just start casually having these conversations. A couple of days later, the person I mentioned it to emailed me back and said, “Right, you’re doing this. This guy needs your help. Off you go.” And I was like, “Wait, what just happened?”

So, I got my first client before I even technically started a copywriting course. And I went into complete impostor syndrome panic. I called AWAI’s Member Success Team and I’m like, “You told me to do this and I did that and now I have this.” Jessica answered the phone and she’s like, “Okay, take a breath.” AWAI has a great crew that you can call for help at any time.

Do you still write for the music industry? And is there anything you struggle with at this stage?

I still do a little bit of music, but it’s really more on creatives, essentially. So I’ve worked with authors, musicians, copywriters, and marketers, plus coaches and course creators. And then my biggest weakness is scope creep. My picture is probably in the dictionary next to “scope creep.”

Let’s pivot to robots helping writers. What are your experiences so far using AI?

Well, thank goodness for AI, honestly. It’s not taking over my career, my life, my business. It’s a tool that helps me get things done faster. It’s my virtual assistant, essentially. It is a way for me to brainstorm by myself, for the most part. I was kind of on that, “Oh yeah, ChatGPT, AI, whatever. I’ll get to it when I get to it.” Then I started working with Jon Benson on his digital publisher team. Jon Benson has done a nosedive into it. He started CopyPro seven years ago, and that has morphed into what he’s called BNSN. That’s where I started learning. It’s more than just “Write me this,” or “Give me 10 ideas on …” You’re literally having this conversation with AI to flesh out ideas and to get copy at least started.

What challenges do you see in AI?

A lot of people use it who don’t know the fundamentals of copywriting. They just copy, paste, publish. And then you hear people go, “Isn’t ChatGPT getting dumber?” Well, in a way, yes, because it’s a learning platform, and if it’s learning all the bad stuff and people are hitting those thumbs-up [buttons], then that’s what it thinks is good. But that’s not really what’s good. So, it’s important to have the fundamentals. And because everything that I’ve learned through AWAI and Circle of Success has given me that, I can look at it and learn how to refine what I’ve asked for. I can edit so that it doesn’t sound like AI.

What’s your advice to beginners on how to get started in a world already saturated by AI?

Stay away from AI at the beginning. AI is a tool to help you. It’s not going to be able to help you if you don’t understand the fundamentals of what is good copy. What is okay copy? What is bad copy? AI can’t tell you that, because you have to be able to tell it what you’re looking for, and you can’t really tell it what you’re looking for until you understand the fundamentals. So, get those locked down first, and then look at AI as a tool to help elevate and escalate where you’re going to.

EG's Living The Writer's Life story was originally published in Barefoot Writer. To learn more about how you can start living your dream writer's life too, click here.

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