Why I love writing

Some are good with pictures. Some with numbers. My realm is the world of words. Words come natural to me – I’m happy to share them with you.

In my experience, art directors and copywriters are of different species. There is the odd one out, of course, who can do it both. But in general, the creative universe divides into words people and pictures people. It’s the way the world expresses in our minds. Words have always come naturally to me.

Maybe that’s because dwelling in pictures has always been kind of scorned in my family. My parents did not have wallpaper. They had bookshelves. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a telly “lest the boy will never learn to read and write”. Comics were despised too, as were magazines with pictures in them.

As a result, I’m rubbish with pictures. I perfectly recognise what I see, but I don’t see what things look like. Imagine we’re looking at a mug sitting in front of a teapot. A pictures person will not only see the two objects – to draw them, you also have to realise what bits of the teapot you don’t see because they’re obscured by the mug. That information doesn’t register in my brain, so instead of drawing, I have to retreat to writing, “There’s a mug sitting next to a teapot”. The rest I must leave to the cinema between your ears.

The upside is that it is always a greatly enriching experience to work with the pictures guys.