Brutal truth

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

Once upon a time, in a land far away, lived a young woman, Angela, who toyed with the idea of being a writer. She lived in the hostel and was a month away from completing her post-graduation in Media. Marketing, Photography, Video Films, Production, Journalism, and Public Relations were her subjects, and she had spoken to one of the best ad-film production houses in the country. As she neared the end of her course, she chose to intern with an advertising agency, although she was confident that what she had been taught in the course was nowhere near what would be required of her in an agency. The agency was a creative hot spot; her advertising professor also worked here. Everyone was busy. No one had the time to hold hands or lead gently; you had to fight aggressively to be seen and recognized as one of their own. 

When Angela started her internship, she was placed in one of the best teams in the agency. The work was long hours and usually only started around noon. But Angela was an early bird, and in her eagerness to save as much as she could, since her pay as an intern was well below basic pay, she hitched a ride with her family at 8 am. Eager Angela’s early hours made it seem like she was competing with the building housekeeping. The only other team that was in this early was the editing team, and the editing team took a liking for the fresh intern who was an early bird. The hierarchy in an agency used to be rigid, teams rarely mingled, and everyone claimed they were the best. As an intern, her main chore was grunt work. Fetching coffee, being amicable, sitting through edits, and providing ideas that were taken to completion by seniors was a norm that she quickly got the hang of. 

The internship was for 8 weeks, and usually, interns were encouraged to mingle with all the creative teams if they had joined to be writers and editing teams if they wanted to be editors and so on. No one had heard of a writer wanting to get into editing or vice versa, and these amphibians who could navigate two creative worlds had to work extra hard to prove their mettle. Usually, the intern had to make this choice before they got into the agency, once you were onboard as a writer, you could not extend your internship by wanting to join the editing team. Or that was the reason the editing team was given when they asked to absorb young Angela into their team.  

When Angela was informed of this, she was disappointed, but she did not let the disappointment affect her work or her morale. Around this time, a junior from her college joined the agency as an intern. As a senior intern, it was Angela’s job to walk the newbie through the rounds of what was expected. These guided tours were personalized by Angela to be more inclusive and friendly, something she had missed when she had started a few weeks ago. Conversations and confidences were shared, and it was around this time that Angela realized that she could be a copywriter anywhere in the world, and there was no reason for her to do this while being away from her family or things that were familiar to her. So, when her internship period was completed, she decided to transfer back to the hometown branch and work from there. 

In retrospect, it was probably a bad decision professionally for Angela to relocate back home so early in her career without first establishing herself. Fortunately for her, it was one of the best personal decisions she would make. The move back to her hometown was not as straightforward as she expected it to be. The agency was mediocre, working in the shadow of the agency in the big city. The teams would often mingle, especially the creative teams, and when creative ideas are shared, there is always something lost in translation and perception. By the time Angela realized this, she had spent a lot of effort trying to please too many members of the team, and she started to lose interest in what she could bring to the table. As a norm, interns and junior writers are the worker bees in any agency, and no agency wants to lose these diligent workers. So, when one of the Creative Directors, who had never worked or interacted with Angela, decided to give her an appraisal, his brutal feedback almost shattered her perception of herself. 

It was delivered in the middle of the week, and the team was aware of this feedback. The monologue:  “Let me be brutal. You cannot write. You will never be a writer.” destroyed what little self-confidence Angela had managed to hold onto in her attempt to please everyone. She was devastated. She quit the job. She had no work. And even after six months, she had made no friends in this alien world. But she did have friends in the city. She took the weekend to wallow in self-pity, recreate her resume, and collate her portfolio. The new week started with a hunt for a new job – that of a writer. It took only a few hours for Angela to realize that her ex-boss may have been right on one count when he said that she could not write. Writing is always personal, and she would never be the writer, or better still, she could never write about what he thought was good writing. All she could do was experience the world and share her perceptions, and the world would decide if she was a writer or not. It took a lot of courage for Angela to step off the ledge at the deep end, but the world was her oyster. 

Writing is a skill. It is a way to express your deepest feelings or even your crazy or often frivolous thoughts. As humans, all of us are voyeurs and love to read about something scandalous happening around us. There will always be an audience. And when there is an audience, there will also be trolls, people who will say in a million different ways that you cannot do something or be something but will be unable to put down ten words to show you how it should be done. And Angela learned this over many years and tons of attempts. For every brutal creative director she worked with, there was always that encouraging and gentle video editor who would guide her in the best course of action to take. 

Today, almost two decades into the field of writing, Angela is not a copywriter, but she is a writer who works at creating content that can elicit a response that’s not just, “Oh! My! God! What was she thinking!”, but also includes, “She’s so right.” or “This is hilarious!”.