Well, imagine that - a writer, at a loss for words. How terribly cliched.

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It was sometime between 3am, the umpteenth draft and the next cigarette break on a cool autumn Tuesday in May, 2020. I sat there, caught between a keyboard and a hard place. Alone with my thoughts in the dim light of a destitute desk lamp. My mind on the verge of screensaver mode. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. Just another day at the office in this line of work. The only difference was that this time, it was personal.

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Mentally multitasking. Multiple tabs open in my mind. Eyes, scanning webpage after webpage, word after word. Further and further down the digital rabbit hole. Searching for that one word, concept, sentence. The spark that would ignite the kindling.

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My mind, on the other hand, was wandering and wondering. Pondering how to overcome the uneasy irony in the contrite act of an advertising copywriter, tasked to write copy, that advertises his ability to write ads.

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The very idea seemed ludicrous. It felt wrong. Self-righteous. Self-centred. Self-indulgent. Besides, there was no proper brief, the subject matter disinteresting and all concepts were either too objective, or too subjective. I was, by far, the worst client that I have ever had the displeasure of writing for in all of my 15 years in the industry, both at agencies and as a freelancer. And that, was no mean feat.

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I was about to punch out for the night. Pack it in. Live to write another day. Then, suddenly, there it was. It reached out through the screen and grabbed my attention by the throat, shaking and waking me.

 

The holy grail. The jackpot. The sentence.

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“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly - they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

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― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

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It was perfect. It represented everything that I believed writing, especially for advertising, should be. It was a manifesto. A blueprint. An inspiration to find a voice that resonates through the white noise in a world in which consumers are bombarded with a barrage of between 4 000 and 10 000 advertisements every day. It wasn't a sentence, as much as it was a picture painted with words. 

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The title of Huxley's 1932 magnum opus from which the excerpt originated, was, purely coincidentally, hauntingly apt in terms of the times we are currently living in. This is indeed a Brave New World, if ever there was one. The whole world has changed in the blink of an eye and will continue to do so, forcing us to drastically adapt and change the way we think, shop, play, communicate, work and live.

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Advertising, too, will change. Perhaps it is high time that it did, for that matter. As will I, as a person, as well as a writer.

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I am not going to hard sell you by regaling myself and stroking my own ego. Instead, I am going to let my work speak for itself. Consider it a retrospective. An evolutionary showcase. A taste of things to come.

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Before I finally say goodnight to the dim light and lay the keyboard to rest, please pardon me as I take my leave with one brief moment of self-indulgence. One single thing that I do want to say about my work. If you're looking for bold statements, engaging messages, brave words and a vast scope of writing skills - I'm your man.

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Case closed.

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