The words were there. Crisp and rhythmic, chosen carefully for this moment. I’d spent years crafting them, scribbling ideas on coffeeshop napkins and talking through my script in the shower. Hundreds of onstage attempts had forced a rewrite.
Move this word here and replace it with that word.
Words matter. Big words, small words. Pauses and breaths. The unplanned is planned, the accidents are purposeful. Every word matters. And those words take time.
It takes time to find the right words. You’ve said them before - maybe not in the right order - but they are part of your vernacular. The right words are standing by, ready to be called upon at a moment’s notice.
What seems simple to an outside observer is anything but. A simple joke or slogan takes work. Obvious ideas are hard to create. As Martin Scorsese says, “There’s no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.”
Simple is hard. And hard things take time.
And this time, the words were there. They were echoing out of the speakers and the audience was listening. Laughter and applause were a byproduct of those properly configured words.
My words.
Except I wasn’t saying them this time. I was standing in the back, watching from afar. I was in the darkness and someone else was up there. Someone else was using my words.
Ideas are personal. It takes courage to work on an idea. The crippling self-doubt that comes with working on a creative project will break you. You’ll fear that nothing you have to say will ever live up to what other artists are doing. You’ll lose sleep and lose friends. You’ll think about giving up and forget why you started doing this in the first place.
Sometimes you’ll have to abandon everything else so you can find a couple more words to move you closer to your goal. But just give it time - the words will come. And then it’s up to you to put them in the right order.
When you finally find the words and get a chance to use them it’s cathartic. You know their intention. You know how long it took to get them to cooperate. The subtext will be understood by all - because those are your words.
When someone else uses your words it will not do them justice. Sure, they may succeed briefly. They may work for a short while. But chances are, your words will let them down in the end. The words don’t fit them like they fit you.
You’ll sit in the dark and for a brief second struggle to find the words to truly express how you feel. But don’t worry, the words will come. They always do.
All 454 of them.