Water from a Stone

“Oh - and we don't get bored easily.
We've got the momentum to keep projects and people on task.”

This is a sentence from our website. I have to make myself re-read it every so often, because it’s probably one of the hardest promises that we’ve made our clients and ourselves. Our summer has been a busy one and lately it seems to be catching up with us. Not to go into too much detail, but last night one of us angrily ate a raw potato and the other sang the entire Hairspray soundtrack in a state of melancholy.

After two and a half years of productive and prolific quick-wording, writing never gets easier. Don’t get us wrong – we absolutely love to write. We share quotes, poems, articles, books and ideas for scripts and stories with each other every waking hour. Our office banter usually involves dissecting the philosophical nuances of an email or constructing epic WhatsApp folktales with family members.

But to enable a steady stream of inspiration, creativity and wordplay in our professional capacity, I am a believer in putting things in, to get something out. So, we make sure we always take the necessary steps to keep our brains fat and happy. We sit in the back row of seminars on robotics, we listen to podcasts about star formations, and we read magazines about nature and books about daring escapes and historical conquests. We savour every new word and idea.

Being curious works wonders.  This cauldron of information means that ideas bubble to the surface pretty comfortably. Knowledge kicks off a spark of excitement about a new angle, or perspective lights a fire in our bellies (as we always hope it does).

And when it comes to our work, it’s hard to express that satisfying sensation of seeing words slide into place on the page. When we can help the rhythms of language shake it out in a heading or brand story, or allow something as conventionally dull as a product catalogue to have its own melodic chorus – the process and craft of writing – it’s music to us.

But occasionally, in our quest for solutions and to tick off competencies on a brief, we end up confronted with that perennial truth – writing is hard. And good writing is really, really hard. Some days, trying to write something as straightforward as a press release can feel like you’re squeezing juice from a lemon that’s been left in the vegetable drawer for three months.

It can seem, even to us, a strange notion that these things we can string together in seconds on a keyboard or spill out verbally – words – the little bricks of communication, can be so elusive.

There are weeks where a brief keeps us chasing tails, ghosts and shadows down endless corridors of a house haunted by self-doubt, anxiety and the fear of misunderstanding.

But to a world of turning cogs and spinning wheels and individuals facing their own haunted house corridors, I make sure that I remind myself to read that sentence on our website. Why? Because sometimes you just have to stick at it. Even though this writing gig can be one tough show, the curtain will fall on this project to clear the stage for the next. All we can do is make sure we dance right alongside those words, until we’ve got the steps right (or as close to right as they’ll ever be!)

Creative copywriting is a lot like choreography – muddling through the motions and hoping that with a little passion and enthusiasm, it will all be sensational on the night. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Even if some weeks we accidentally eat raw potatoes and sing along to musicals.