@Strangling My Muse Thanks Sandy. I am glad you find your copywriting feeds your creative practice – this is ideally how things should be! With experience comes the right balance, and it sounds like you’re well versed in getting things on an even keel. Of course we writers need our downtime too, and I know I sometimes find it hard to settle down to my own work at the end of a long day! Good luck with all your writing!

But in January this year I started reading the book The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron – some of it is a bit self helpy for me, but I’ve been writing morning pages every morning and they’ve been a revelation (basically three pages of stream of consciousness every morning before you do anything else). The book also has a lot of stuff about replenishing yourself creatively, so you have a lot of energy for creating when it comes to it – so indulging yourself in downtime, having a lot of fun.

And for the first time in ages, I feel like writing creatively is actually fun again! I wrote some haikus last week and been working on a poem this week. So I recommend that to anyone reading this blog who’s feeling a bit stuck creatively – because they write for a job, or for any other reason. Another thing I’ve been thinking about doing recently is joining a writing group – I too feel like the pressure of deadlines (and the encouragement of a group environment) would be helpful for creative writing.

Great post by the way – I always enjoy reading this blog

~Sandy

But although my grass roots profession demanded a resourceful and creative approach to work, I was still bugged if not haunted by the need to write and live by my pen. I have a social-worker friend who maintains that social workers are often repressed artists, I’m not surprised.

I discovered copy writing having retrained as a broadcast journalist. Maybe it’s because I came to the profession later in my career, or maybe its because my circuitous route has included one or two challenges, whatever – chameleon, intermediary, ghost – I love what I do.

Like any phantom though, I’m restless and like any journalist I’m nosey. So this article has had me musing over who I would like to be a ghost writer for, if I could choose anyone – one of the unheard Afghan voices I used to work with? A New York northen soul singer in Pitsmoor who once coached the south african national athletics team? Or a rags to riches business man who started life selling shirts on the Sheffield markets?

I sense many an untold story belonging to people unable or unwilling to tell it for themselves. I’d like to write it for them, will I be able to rest if I don’t?

This post was mentioned on Twitter by iainbroome: New post: Are copywriters ghosts of their writing selves? (by @manuelaboyle) : http://ow.ly/1b9Cw...