Creativity + Boundaries
Here’s the thing about growing up in a family-owned small business: boundaries blur together, if they exist at all. The business becomes your backyard. You finish your homework behind the cash register. Greeting customers and answering phone inquiries are your chores. My childhood memories are filled with my parents’ students babysitting me or teaching me algebra; the school’s martial arts retreats to the White Mountains were our family vacations, our kitchen table welcomed students who couldn’t travel back home to their families for Thanksgiving.
There are skills I learned in this environment that helped guide my creative career: independence, ambition, an entrepreneurial spirit. A willingness to take risks. But this model also left me with a deficit: those blurred boundaries created a fragility; there was no distinction between who I was and what I produced, my worth as a person was intertwined with the value of my work—this dynamic was further complicated when the nature of my art, like the family business, was sharing my cultural heritage. And, being raised by martial artists—whether they intended it or not—the message I received was a boundary was a limitation, a limitation was a weakness, and weakness brought shame.
I’ve had to learn that boundaries help me recognize who I am and how to show up authentically as myself—including when I make art and share it. Making art is an act of vulnerability. We need to be vulnerable to share the parts of ourselves that audiences connect to and make them feel something they recognize in themselves. Vulnerability isn’t possible without some degree of risk—What if I miss the mark and the story falls short? How’s it going to feel when my art is rejected or criticized? What if it’s not just my art that’s rejected or criticized, but me? Boundaries can help make these risks feel less threatening. Here are some of the prompts I consider when I’m assessing the boundaries that help make my creative work possible:
Boundaries between Artist + Art
What are you creating? Why?
Is it something you’re creating for yourself or for others?
How autobiographical is the material?
Is the subject an issue you’re actively working through or is it resolved?
How emotional do you get when you’re addressing this topic? Is it something you’re comfortable talking about with other people?
Are you seeking validation from your audience or are you sharing this story to provide something they might find interesting or valuable?
Where do you notice the most ease in the process? Where do you meet the most resistance? What boundaries make that ease possible? Can they be implemented in the stages that feel more difficult?
Boundaries between Artist + Process
It can be challenging as an artist to turn off the parts of our brains that observe the world and channel it into art. Some of the prompts I use include:
When are my office hours? When am I off the clock?
What are the other ways I express my creativity in my life? How do I make these experiences a priority in my routines?
What are the cues that make it hard for me to honor those boundaries? What systems can I put in place to make them easier? For example: Jogging is a hobby that’s part of my self-care routines, but I often get ideas when I’m out for a jog. Putting ideas on Post-Its when I get home, or scheduling them in my Reminders app with an alarm for my next work session, helps me feel like I’m not going to lose track of something important without jumping into work on my day off.
Boundaries between Artist + Audience
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open,” Stephen King advises in On Writing. “Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.”
This advice, first published in 2000, still applies today but with some caveats. Maintaining an author platform often includes sharing the behind-the-scenes process, turning King’s metaphoric door into a swinging door, a revolving door, a screen door—not quite something with a lock. Sharing my work as it is written in a story subscription program, as well as craft notes and notes on the creative process in The Beautiful Worst, has taught me to manage these blurred boundaries by:
Maintaining consistency in the content I share on each platform
Communicating with my audience to manage their expectations
Contextualizing feedback. I learned to limit myself from reading reviews of my book unless I’m assessing any trends in my craft, largely because there’s not much I can do once a book is published. Subscriber feedback on Patreon is higher priority so I can implement any changes to improve the service or revisions for future editions of my stories.
Also, when I’m sharing notes on my process, I aim to be transparent about what works, what doesn’t work, and the lessons I learn, but I don’t task my readers with soothing my creative or professional insecurities. Even if it’s something I’m actively working through, I offer the solutions I’m experimenting with and what results I hope to see.
Honoring My Own Boundaries
I’ve learned that I’m the first person to respect my own boundaries. I can’t expect anyone else to honor them if I can’t uphold them myself. Regular reflections and reminding myself that I’m a human first, before an artist, helps me identify my needs and how to protect them throughout the creative process.