Self-censorship limits creativity, but not all artists are aware of their own. Are you?
After listening to a podcast by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn with guest author Steven Pressfield I got to thinking about my own self-imposed censorship in my creativity. I know I censor myself. I question everything I say, everything I create. Have a listen to the podcast before you continue reading. You can skip ahead to 24:10 where I think the conversation gets more interesting.
Joanna Penn claims to have conquered her own creative self-censorship, but is that really possible? I don’t believe it is. We can fight against it, sure, but we can never truly defeat it. Pressfield says this when talking about resistance, which the category of self-censorship definitely falls within.
My own self-censorship stems from many different roots. Let’s take a look at a few.
- The Inner Censor
What is it I want to say in my work? I have something I am trying to get across to the reader, but what is it? In the search for the moral of a story or the purposeful molding of a character I am limiting my creative freedom. The muse wants me to spew all of the magic she gifts to me onto a published page, but I restrain myself from doing so. I limit my thoughts to a point where over 99% of them never get to be published. In building worlds which have order and appeal, I censor myself.
- Social Responsibility
I’ve had many discussions over this topic. Does an author, or any creative for that matter, have a responsibility to respect their potential audience? I know that society helps shape the stories I write, though I try to not let it. I’ve been asked before of what kind of role model am I creating for little boys and girls to look up to. Role models? My characters? That was never my intention, nor even a thought in my mind. My characters are often gritty, brash, and chaotic in many ways. To what do I owe society to create something for it? Nothing, but I know that I try to please it anyway.
Society pressures me to teach, to inspire, but what is art when it is kept in a pretty little cage? A tiger is meant to roam free. To hunt. To kill. To mate. It is the nature of the tiger. When we cage it and bowl feed it and pet it and train it, we still call it a tiger, but is it really?
- Familial Pressures
Can I really put this into my book? What would mom think? Would my dad think I’m gay? Would my fiancée be upset? This plays into the social responsibility, but it is on a much more personal level. How much sex, violence, bigotry, sexism, racism, and so on can I put into my book before I offend those close to me? It matters to me. Maybe not to all. Should it matter to me? I don’t think so, but I can’t quite let myself be free either.
Those three broad categories can be broken down further, but I think they get the point across and every creator out there battles with each of them every day.
And this discussion is not necessarily about expressing revolutionary ideas. It is not merely about being offensive for the sake of expressing one’s creative freedom or testing society’s artistic boundaries. Self-censorship can prevent an author from writing about a flower, it can stop an artist from painting a pair of socks as described in a blog post by Lauryn Welch over at Art Prof:
By the time I graduated college, I had a choir full of internal voices clamouring “don’t do this!” “don’t do that!”, and I was struggling trying to paint something to satisfy all of these rules. After I graduated college, I found myself all alone in my studio with no peers or professors, no expectations or directions. I was alone with myself, and all of these rules were only voices in my head.
I realized I could paint whatever I wanted.
I want to say that again because it sounds so deliciously sweet.
I. Could. Paint. Whatever. I. Wanted.
So I painted a pair of socks. I really liked this pair of mismatched socks, and I admired the rug underneath them, and the combination of the rug and the socks made me giddy with happiness. I had no complicated, academic motives. It was great!
Simple. She was able to break through a self-built barrier (aided in creation by the rigidity of schooling) and create what she wanted, what made her happy.
Socks by Lauryn Welch
I think it is something we should all be aware of so that we know to push back against it. It is a lifelong battle for any artist. There are already enough laws in place and retailer restrictions which censor our art, so let’s mitigate all of this censorship by opening up our own creativity and letting loose our inner demons. Don’t let self-censorship limit your creativity.
