Do your verbs

I am talking to a writer client. 

A scriptwriter, she’s had a lousy run of luck. She’s had a series of projects that fell at the final hurdle.

One film was given the green light, then suddenly cancelled due to personnel changes at the studio.

Another idea had been continually optioned by a production company that clearly had no intention of ever making it into a TV series – but didn’t want anyone else to do it, either. 

She is stuck. 

She’s miserable. She is spending far too much time online, comparing her stalled career with the apparent success of her peers. 

“I just want to write!” she says. 

My reply is simple: “Then write!”

As creatives, we sometimes forget this. 

We don’t need permission to do what we do.

We don’t need a written invitation. Or a commission. Often, all we need to do is begin. 

To be clear, I’m no fan of the romantic myth of the starving artist. We all want and need to be paid for our work. And being recognised for our work is also more important than many of us like to admit.

But sometimes, the work comes first. And the money and the praise follow later.

So just do your verbs.

The blogger, artist and author Austin Kleon talks a lot about this. In his book Keep Going, he says that ‘creative’ is not a noun.

It’s something you do, not something you are.

Labels are restrictive anyway. 

If you call yourself a painter, what happens if you want to try writing? If you’re a film-maker, does that mean you can’t make sculpture? 

“We are not nouns,” says Stephen Fry. “We are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer. I am a person who does things. I write, I act. And I never know what I’m going to do next. You can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

Most of all, the labels hold us back from starting. “If you wait for someone to give you a job title before you do the work, you might never do the work at all,” writes Kleon. “You can’t wait for someone to call you an artist before you make art. You’ll never make it.”

Even the most successful career stalls at times.

There are dry patches. Times when the inspiration won’t come, when the work isn’t coming in, or it’s just not selling.

We make bad choices. Collaborations go wrong. Projects wither or die through no fault of our own.

And it’s crushing. It can be hard to bounce back when you feel so beaten down. 

But the solution is usually the same. 

Take a break. Replenish. Recover. Lick your wounds for a little while. 

Then just do your verbs. Explore. Experiment. Be playful, messy, imperfect.

Make new work. Or refresh old work. Remind people of what you do. And how well you do it.

• If you’re a photographer, take pictures.
• If you’re an artist, make work.
• If you’re a dancer, then dance.
• If you’re a writer, just write something.
• If you’re a musician, sing, play, write and record.
• If you’re an entrepreneur, pivot or launch.

Knit. Programme. Sew. Draw. Plant. Make. Build. Produce. Direct. Cook. Grow. Perform. Entertain. Play. Curate. Invent a new verb, if you need to.

If you’re a creative of any kind, create. 

Do the thing you love to do.

Just do it because it makes you feel alive.

Sure, it’s challenging at times. But we humans get real joy out of problem-solving, working through difficulties and coming out the other side.

Do it because it’s who you are. Or who you will be, as soon as you start doing your verbs.

Here’s the strange thing.

You do your verbs, and the world shifts. It seems to sense that you’re in motion, and runs to meet you.

I have no explanation for this. I just know I’ve seen it happen in my own life, and with the creatives I coach, again and again. 

Some of this is rational.  You’re busy, so you don’t overthink that email to an old contact. Instead, you just send it. You start working on one idea, and suddenly you have ten more.

When you’re animated and excited about your new work, people pick up on that and they get interested too. 

But some of it is not so easily explained.

Someone who couldn’t possibly know you were making new work randomly gets in touch with a project.

Another person contacts you about a dormant old project and it unexpectedly springs back to life.

Doors you’d been knocking on fruitlessly start to open.

A random chat with a stranger leads to an exciting new possibility. 

I don’t believe in the law of attraction. 

But I do think a person who is active, creating, doing the work is much more magnetic than a person who is stuck in passive victim mode, complaining about their lousy luck.

Luck always has a part to play, when it comes to success. But it’s also true that the more work you make, the luckier you tend to get. 

So my scriptwriter client started writing again.

She picked up an old project and decided to finish it. Then got an idea for something completely new.

She took meetings about both projects, and one of these meetings also led to interest in the earlier project that had hit a wall. Development money is trickling in. Nothing spectacular yet, but she’s a working writer again. 

She also has an idea for a podcast that she wants to launch with a friend. The attic where she writes has been cleared of clutter, and the once-grubby walls painted a warm, welcoming yellow. She’s volunteering at a community garden.

Most of all, she’s happy, engaged with life, full of new plans and ideas. Which is what tends to happen when you get into action, when you start doing your verbs.

So what’s your verb, today?