Creating Safe Boundaries When You’re Creating

"It's my story, I lived it, and I can tell it however I like," one student told me. “No one can tell me what not to say.” I knew this writer as a forthright activist, never shying from truth telling and confrontation. Yet I wasn’t surprised when she stopped writing her book, let it dwindle off one summer never to return to it. She emailed me, confused. “I was so hot on this story. But now I can’t bear to even approach it.”

I’ve seen this so many times. The inner gatekeeper, panicky about the boundaries we are crossing from agreed-upon safety into danger, has shut the gate fast. Like a parent who disciplines a child, the gatekeeper is powerful in our psyches. If we abuse what it thinks is the right to freedom as a creative person, if we don’t keep boundaries clear and sane, it steps in.

Why? Because we’re now feeding the part of ourselves that eats fear for breakfast.

It’s the part that, deep down, worries about being cast out. Our freedom to express has taken us into an area of possible judgment from others. We’ve opened our private lives to the public.

Sometimes I wonder why we have this gatekeeper—why, even if it’s unconscious, it controls our writing lives so effectively. (A thorough exploration of the gatekeeper can be found in Judith Hendin’s excellent book, The Self behind the Symptom.) I rebel against it constantly; writing what matters most, matters to me.

But I also notice what happens inside—to my health, my sleep, my joy—when I mess with it. And I notice this boundary-crossing effect in many of my students.

One wanted to write a novel loosely based on his family, but fear of their criticism always stopped him. No amount of hiding details behind the fictional wall soothed this concern. His older brother, in particular, haunted him whenever he sat down at his laptop. Like living with ghosts. The gatekeeper kept him from completing this memoir.

Another, writing a self-help book, felt equally frozen by imagined future criticism from university colleagues. "In academia," she told me, "self-help is laughed at."

A third wasn't at all concerned about the background she shared in her memoir (addiction and severe childhood trauma). She didn’t have anyone left in her family to judge her. But she was a very private person, abhorring the idea that she’d attract unwanted curiosity. Unable to continue with the true story, she tried fictionalizing, but it didn’t create safe enough boundaries about the underlying information.

I personally have two gatekeepers, or one that works a double shift: fear of criticism and fear of exposure and resulting intrusion. When I began publishing in the 1980s, it was easier to draw a circle around my private life. The internet erases much of that safety today. Private thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and facts are instantly exposed to public scrutiny.

I remember a story I wrote years ago about my grandmother's death. She was a wonderful woman, strong and true, and very faith-rich until she was mugged outside her apartment. She believed God had deserted her in that moment, and it started her decline. She died not long after, a ghost of her former self.

As a young woman, this change in my beloved grandmother shocked and haunted me for years. I wanted badly to write about it, about what happens when we lose faith in ourselves or our lives. The story ended up in my second memoir.

i wasn't prepared for the reaction from some family readers, after the book was published. Not entirely approving, that I'd shared this intimate detail about our matriarch. And not entirely agreeing with my version of what happened.

This is not an uncommon experience for memoirists. I asked friends whose stories I included to read and approve of my version but I hadn't asked my family. Too afraid of their censor, perhaps. Or just too stubborn to agree to changes, not unlike my student above. But soon after, I switched away from memoir into fiction. Family breaches healed, and I felt safer.

My new novel changed the game again. It is coming out in October, inspired by my mother, a World War II pilot, to be released not long after her birthday (she’d be over 100 this year). I wanted to not only write a compelling story about women pilots, out of admiration for those who bust through this traditional male work wall. I wanted to honor my mom in my own small way.

I always wanted to know more about the risks she took as a woman pilot—she got her commercial pilot’s license in her twenties then joined the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots; out of 20,000 applicants, around 1000 were selected—but after the war she moved on to raising kids and supporting our family, not talking much about those years of flying. After her death, I learned she flew small planes and four-engine bombers, sometimes the same day. She ferried aircraft to locations in the U.S. and Canada for two years, then she came home, put away her flying days, and got to work as a typical 1950s housewife.

One of the aspects of risk that comes up for me is: Am I being true to her legacy, writing this book? My novel is clearly fiction, not subject to scrutiny of fact or family history. But I want to portray the two women pilots as pushing boundaries in every aspect of their lives, as I know my mom did before she settled down.

Like my students mentioned above, I am driven to write, to understand the female qualities of strength and survival. How it is possible to fly bombers at age twenty-two?

And how did she live through my older sister’s tragic death? Losing a child way before her time. We weren't a family who talked about the tragedies, so I only have a scattering of conversational memories. I notice that when I sit to write about these topics—even right now, as I compose this newsletter—my stomach twists a little, my head leans forward, my neck tightens. Sure, I have the freedom, even the right to write about these pivotal experiences in my mother’s—and my—life. I'm also learning those body sensations that tell my I’ve crossed a line of comfort. The inner gatekeeper is on high alert because of perceived risk.

It's very individual, where we each locate the intersection of freedom and comfort about how much to expose.

I got a lot of comfort and wisdom from one of Jami Attenberg’s Craft Talk newsletters. She writes "Boundaries must exist, and this is for everyone’s benefit. A good thing to think about in your writing: what you’re willing to tell and what you need to keep close for yourself. How much of yourself do you need to put out there?"

"Even if we write fiction," she adds, "the most beautiful literary subterfuge, we can tap into certain personal wells and it can feel (to us, at least) like those boundaries become translucent."

Many of us writers launch a deeply felt project with the specter of criticism and exposure hovering close. At least, I've seen this with my classes and private clients over the past two decades. We write about anything when we're freewriting, but when aiming towards publication, those inner gates shut fast. Any creative flow strangles. (There are exceptions, like the writer above who felt anything was game on the page, damn the consequences).

The goal is a middle ground, I've found. Through time, I test out my own comfort zone. I’ll take steps towards risk, renegotiate my contract with the inner gatekeeper. But the bigger the exposure—say, with a novel which has gotten excellent reviews and looks like it will be well received (dare I hope!)—all bets are off, once again. I relished the freedom of writing, editing, and finishing. Now I face the responsibility of exposure and what others will do with my gift.

It’s out of my control, it always is. Maybe that's why I take my sweet time with my books. I write and revise endlessly, trying to find that boundary that allows my free expression and also my safety--or at least a measure of it, call it sanity perhaps, that allows me to keep writing and keep believing in myself.

Good questions to ponder. Attenberg says it so well: "How do we travel the line between pushing ourselves to be vulnerable, honest, interesting and still make ourselves feel safe? How do we take risks as artists and still protect ourselves? How do we stay steady even as we explore and exploit the wildness of our minds?"

A final note about writer’s block, which is oh-so-connected to this topic of safety and danger. Sometimes, we feel pushed to share beyond our comfort zone. Class feedback asks for more about a topic you’re dancing around. An editor or agent does the same. You comply, but the writing flow reduces to a trickle. Suddenly, you just don’t feel like writing at all. Some gatekeeper inside has slammed the door because you’ve put yourself in danger, in its mind.

We writers are very attuned to this, and I’ve witnessed many cases of writer’s block from line crossing, in myself and others. It’s a learning process, for sure—we don’t always know where that line is. Or maybe we’re brave or defiant or rebellious at the core, and we think lines are meant to be crossed. Who dares to tell us where our freedom begins and ends! Nobody.

But we stop writing. Stop creating. Dry up a bit more each day we’re away from it. The critical inner voice gets louder.

This week’s exercise is a gentle soother for that voice. It allows you to revisit your personal boundaries and see if they are still useful, need shoring up, need relinquishing.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Make a list of topics, memories, ideas, thoughts, concepts you’re comfortable sharing with an unknown reader. Make a second list of those you’re uneasy about sharing with that reader. And a third of those things you’d never share. (No one will see these lists but you, so you can dive deep and be brutally honest with yourself.)

Pick one from each list and free write for 10-15 minutes about your feelings of danger or safety with each one.

Have you crossed the line Attenberg talks about, even inadvertently, and your writing has narrowed or even shut down because of the danger you feel?

What’s one step you might take towards more personal freedom with your writing and your creativity, while still staying safe and sane? Would talking with someone, maybe even someone who lives in the story, across the line, help at all?

Would writing a letter to your inner gatekeeper, asking to renegotiate the contract about pubic and private?

Would focusing on a different topic or kind of writing or creating (a poem, song lyrics, a sketch or design) give you a break from fear’s intensity and allow the distance you need to really decide?

In the Comments below, share one step you might take to soothe the inner gatekeeper, allowing you to move forward in your writing this week.