Back in 2004 I was able to get an interview with world class copywriter Brian Keith Voiles and pick his brain about some of the things he does to write his record-shattering ads and sales letters.

Without a doubt, the most practical secret he shared with me was how he creates headlines.

You see, what Brian does is he writes out several hundred headlines in his word processor.

Then, when he's done, he prints them all out, gets a pair of scissors and starts cutting out words, phrases and ideas.

Then, he starts playing around with the order and combination of words until he winds up with a headline he's satisfied with.

Brian put it like this:

I don't know about you, but I find this fascinating.

In fact, I recently experimented with doing this myself.

I was playing with my kids, helping them create some holiday decorations, and I had the scissors out and found that as I was cutting and pasting and keeping my mind and hands concentrating on the task at hand, that ideas and solutions for a project I was working on did start racing into my mind.

In fact, so many ideas started coming, I actually had to struggle to keep up with them all.

The next time you are stuck for ideas writing your headlines I would really urge you to try this. Get the scissors out and start cutting and playing around with the words and phrases.

It may sound simple, but it works.

And it works like nothing else I've ever seen when it comes to generating an endless supply of ideas and solutions.

"it sort of takes me out of this virtual mindset of these things virtually existing on the computer. I love the textile-ness of the paper and the cutting and sound and the taping and…it just puts me into a whole different side of my creative mind. It’s almost like my right brain has a left and right brain to it."