What are the words that shaped your life?

I’m a Radio 2 girl myself, but I was very grateful to our director, Chris, this morning for pointing me in the direction of Radio 4’s thought for the day.

Tom Bell of the Iona Community, a group working for peace and social justice, spoke about the impact of the words we learn as a child on our adult lives – listen to it here (it starts at 1h47m, if you’re interested).

I’m sure I’m not the only one who can remember quotations learned by heart for school homework, yet can’t recall a conversation I had last Thursday.

There’s always gold among the dust of memory said Mr Bell, and it struck me just how many of the words I read, heard or learned in youth inspired my love of writing.

“The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes” - T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, an A-level syllabus standard that to this day remains my favourite poem.

“Ask if I am mouse or man, the mirror squeaked away I ran” - a lyric from Sting’s song, Seven Days. As the child of two Geordies I was raised on a diet of Tyneside’s finest!

“Like the base Indian threw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe” - Othello, the play that pacified my love/hate relationship with Shakespeare.

Granted, at the time of stumbling across these I was going to be the female Nick Hornby rather than a B2B copywriter, but I still draw on these quips – and many others – whenever creative drought strikes.

However, Mr Bell’s evocative speech was building to a far more salient point.

In today’s digital society, our heads are filled with passwords over poetry, logins rather than linguistics. Accessing information has become more important than registering deep inside the things that might shape us, he concluded.

Besides touching me on a personal note, his observation hit home professionally. Today’s marketing culture is driven by ROI; we track the performance of every word, rigorously split testing to scientifically swell engagement.

I’m not eschewing analysis in copywriting – it’s important to measure the success of what we craft, to improve its potency. However, this experimentation must never come at the cost of creativity.

After all, I might be a 30-year-old content manager, but inside there’s still a little girl who really wants to be a writer when she grows up. And she’s the engine behind my best work.