Creativity Doesn't Require Being Chosen

Creativity is an act of self-esteem, where instead of waiting to be picked, you choose yourself.

I saw a tweet the other day from a young actor, bemoaning the fact that nobody seems to be taking a chance on them. It was along the lines of "I'm very talented and I deserve to get a role on TV before the end of the year."

The tweet bugged me -- and it took me a while to figure out why.

Part of it was that I related to it.

When my self-esteem dips, when I'm feeling sorry for myself, it can be easy to wonder about the whys. Why was I not chosen for that project last year? Why hasn't Steven Spielberg got in touch to tell me how great I am? Why have I earned less money this year than last year?

We all have moments like this.

But the tweet bugged me on a deeper level because I realised I disagreed with the premise.

It's like that iconic speech by Mark Duplass at SXSW, about how the cavalry is not coming.

Steven Spielberg is not going to turn up in your emails tonight.

Nor should he. He's busy making movies.

Spielberg was making films at eight years old. If Twitter/X existed during his childhood, he wouldn't have been complaining about a lack of opportunities, he'd have been making movies.

We all have various levels of privilege. One young person may live with their parents and be gifted a DSLR camera, while another person could be the same age but working two jobs to support their first child. So it's good to note that when I go on to say "anyone can be creative," there are of course different levels to our personal amounts of free time, and the safety of our environments and all of those things.

But if you have a pen, you can write. If you have a phone that can record video, you can be a filmmaker. If you have an internet connection, you can start a blog. You can write a self-published novel. You can make comedy sketches for social media.

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash

And if you're still clinging on to the idea of being 'picked', you should know that how people are picked is always changing.

All my life I'd wanted to do a job for the BBC, but had never been close. It wasn't until I started making comedy sketches on TikTok that the BBC reached out to me about a collaboration.

Now, the BBC didn't end up going for the project, I wasn't picked. But the point is, I got on their radar by doing creative things, in new ways, with no promise of success. I see stories like this again and again - both in the media at large, and in my own circle of friends and acquaintances.

I am always amazed when I read the diaries, novels and poems of people who’ve survived war zones or concentration camps. These people had every reason to not do creative work, and yet they still did it. They were able to be creative.

So when I see a tweet about a lack of personal opportunities, I see someone's resistance.

TikTok doesn't care who you are, it just cares if you can hold a viewer’s attention. Substack readers don't care what you look like; they just care about the content. It’s free to participate! You just sign up and get writing. Never before in history have we had so many ways to reach an audience.

Opportunities are out there but in order to grab them, you have to show that you are participating, that you’re creating. It’s not enough to wait around.

To do creative work you have to have a beginners mind and you have to be ready to play. Knowledge and experience should help us, but so often, it makes us slow down and become risk averse. That’s when the resistance and excuses come up.

Maybe you can only write when the baby's asleep, when the sound levels in the coffee shop are just right, when the temperature is just so.

Or maybe that's just resistance.

Don't get me wrong, you're free to wait to be picked. The old way still works, waiting for those auditions to roll in.

But the actors who are grouping together to make fun sketches and thoughtful videos on their phones are the ones who are building their reputations. They’re producing work and they’re reaching people.

These opportunities are available to us all.

This could've been a tweet. But instead I turned it into something else. That's what most of the battle is in the current era; a choice between complaining into the wind, or making a piece of something.

And it's entirely up to you.