I Spent $160 Learning to Write Like Someone Who Spent $160 Learning to Write

The certificate has my name on it. The email has my number.

Photo by Karina Mydlovska on Unsplash

The Day When I Thought I’d Done All the Work on the Draft The client emailed me.

I expected either one of these two messages — “it looks good, proceed,” or “some corrections are needed.” One of those two options, basically. I had worked on that draft for almost three weeks. Read through it that morning when it finally felt like something finished, not just completed.

Subject: “One Comment.”

“This makes it sound like you’re afraid of being sued.”

Ten words.

At first, I did not even feel like defending myself. It is this reaction that stands out the most in my memory. The way my shoulders slumped down. Then a sudden drop in stomach and the numbness afterward — the sensation of having been observed without my knowing it.

I closed my laptop. Stared into the darkness for a few minutes and opened it again to read ten words that destroyed everything my three weeks of hard work had ever managed to build.

It was not anger.

It was understanding.

What 160 Dollars Actually Bought Me

Six months ago, I invested $160 into a writing course. This was my second mistake regarding purchasing courses. Before, I wasted 499 dollars on another online program about making money through Amazon. But instead of teaching how to earn with Amazon, the affiliate course taught me everything else.

And I did well in the course. I got my certificate, and it featured my name on it.

But this time, there was no scam. At least, that was what I thought. In the third module of the course, which was probably called “Voice and Credibility” or something along those lines, we had to strip unnecessary words out of a passage, leaving only the core of the message behind. I did that. I also created before-and-after screenshots and Notion dashboards with a color-coded framework. I watched Module 3 twice as I was sure this would be my salvation.

Four weeks of hard work. The certificate was deserved; Notion was full of fancy dashboards and color codes; the before-and-after pictures were impressive.

But then I went to perform for someone who knew nothing about Module 3.

Writing and outlining are two different things. And, unfortunately, it took me quite some time to figure this out. What the course really taught me was how to write impressively for the people who took the same course. So I prepared for a week to make an impressive performance for an audience I could refer to, but instead, I showed up to solve someone’s problems.

No results at all.

Apology Letter of 600 Words

I reread the draft this time as if I were the client rather than the writer who was analyzing its structure and organization. If the reader decides whether they trusted whoever was writing it.

He was right again. There wasn’t anything in it that held any weight. Everything was cushioned. I managed to write 600 words that never made a claim I couldn’t deny in the morning. The letter was a legal disclaimer in disguise. A man who walked out of a room smiling and made sure there wasn’t any evidence that would be used against him after leaving the premises.

I wrote an apology for having an opinion.

The one part of this letter that really stuck in my throat — the point at which I stopped in my tracks and stared in disbelief — was how I was supposed to use Module 3 to solve all this. How I did the exercises. Submitted the screenshots. Got the concept. And then, when there was real money on the line and a real client in play, put everything back in.

What the course showed me how to do was write a headline that makes people click. What paid was knowing which headlines made people stay and read. Two different things, and I didn’t realize that until I felt proud of doing the former and had miserably failed at the latter.

The Fraud Stage Is Mandatory

I rewrote the draft in 45 minutes.

Not because I discovered something. Ten words shattered any defense I thought I needed. Now stripped of any defense whatsoever, all I did was describe the product in clear terms as if my audience was someone tired of hearing three pitches already and had no interest in being convinced of anything.

It worked.

And while standing in such unique shame, there was one thing that dawned on me that no module will teach you, no matter how expensive or lengthy the course:

The fraud stage is mandatory. After the completion of the course, you feel competent. You write your first draft. Feedback is provided by someone with absolutely no reason to shield you from the truth. You fully regress, not partially, not gracefully, but completely into thinking that you knew nothing. You rewrite. Get feedback again. And finally, slowly, you discover you were not wrong from the start, just wrong in the exact ways that truly matter.

This process “is” the education itself. The course cannot include it, not because of any hidden agenda, but because it is structurally impossible to replicate the experience of seeing your own work labeled “this sounds like a robot after a stroke” after being proud of it a mere hour ago. Seeing them reply even before you hit send, and getting no reply at all, as the track changes are longer than your original copy.

This special sort of shame will stick; no module or exercise will produce this effect. It only happens once real money is put at stake, with no reason for them to sugarcoat anything.

Completion of the course. Feelings of readiness. First piece of true feedback received. Completely break down. Grow through painful drafts. The fraud stage is inevitable.

Discomfort is the master teacher.

For Whom I Should Have Been Writing

But here is what I could not seem to understand until much too late: I was not writing for the client. I was writing for the client as seen through the eyes of someone who has just completed their course. The client who would see the structure of paragraph number two. Who would understand the credibility structure?

My real client was not concerned with any of those things. He had an issue to solve within a limited time frame. And when he read my proposal, he decided in about a minute whether I was the solution or simply performing the act of solving the problem. I was performing.

The very moment that it became clear that one has been writing not for the client but for those who have recently completed their course is a revelation. It will not be taught in a curriculum. Such revelations will usually come unexpectedly, at least ten words into a conversation with the client.

That was exactly what I had been doing. When I finally understood it was the real client, everything changed. Not the structures. Not even the formality. Everything else.

Two Artifacts, One Pinned

My certificate is probably somewhere in a folder.

The email sent by the client is pinned in this thread.

The course provided the container; the client filled it up with what was inside.

One path costs 160 dollars, four weeks, colorful dashboards, screenshots, and a signed certificate.

The other was completely free: an unbiased sentence from someone not getting paid for being soft on me.

Same experience, but an even worse version of me at the end — I actually nearly caved to the upsell!

Which one turned me into a writer?