raw (and uncensored) musings on leadership, philosophy and communication

We are verbs, not nouns

Stephen Fry once said in an interview:

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, 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 am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

Found this at Austin Kleon’s blog who brilliantly explains why you don’t have to call yourself a writer, artist, entrepreneur or even religious! You just do your stuff and worry about your titles (or who you are).

So, instead of calling yourself a writer (or worse worrying about calling yourself a “writer” or a “copywriter” or a “writer who specializes in blah, blah, blah”) start writing, dammit! The doing is what makes you a practitioner. 

Anything else is just talk. And talk is cheap. 

Forget the nouns, do the verbs.

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