I failed to deliver a headline yesterday. Or at least, I failed to deliver a line that the client (bitch) liked more than her own. It’s irritating when such things happen. It didn’t help that the client was the type of person whose sole reason for existence seemed to be to piss people off. It’s amazing how the suits managed to maintain their pleasant dispositions over the course of the teleconference, which, by the way, is an infuriating way of conducting a meeting because it makes it nigh impossible for a peeved copywriter to fling his shoe at a smug client.

But over and above the initial irritation was the total destruction of any confidence in my abilities as a copywriter that I may have previously had. Copywriters are an insecure bunch, as Yvonne pointed out to me. We are constantly afraid that there’ll come a day when we won’t be able to produce. When we’re totally stumped. When we’ll be found out as pretenders. And then? We’ll probably get jobs as editors.

The thing is that there really isn’t anything we can do to guarantee that the next idea WILL come. You can have a great idea one day, triumphantly cracking the brief and going for a celebratory meal somewhere with lots of smoke and then suddenly be stumped by some damn one-liner for some stupid EDM with the word “FREE” in point size 24 the next. So what we, or I at least, continually do is hope for the best. And try to get our hands on as many award books, copy books, novels, archives, pamphlets, direct-mailers and so on and so forth that we can.

But, having said that, it’s kinda fun going to work everyday, fingers crossed, hoping for the best. The triumphs outnumber the defeats definitely. Just that the defeats are more fun to whine about.