017: Creative transgression
The art of crossing over
As May comes to an end, this post is the last on this month’s theme of ‘friction.’ In previous weeks, we touched on the productive qualities of constraint, reframed ‘failure’ and explored the tension between the desire to hide and the need to express. Our enquiry this week relates to ‘creative transgression.’
What possibilities are created when we’re willing to question—and step over—perceived or expected boundaries?
The comfortable separation
You've built your life in carefully constructed containers. There's the professional you: polished, strategic, following what you assume are pathways to success. Then there's the creative you, intuitive and experimental but relegated to stolen moments between your ‘real’ responsibilities. This separation feels safe, manageable, even necessary. After all, creativity is messy and unpredictable, while professional life demands consistency and results. The boundaries between these selves create friction—you navigate constantly between which version to present and which part to suppress.
What if this compartmentalisation is suffocating your creative life force?
Maybe you've tried different approaches to address this friction: carved out sacred creative time, built elaborate systems and followed formulas that promise to unlock your potential while keeping your identities safely separated. You've attended workshops that speak the language of balance but still you find yourself procrastinating on projects, overcomplicating processes and abandoning work before it has chance to breathe in the world.
The friction of separation has become so familiar that you mistake it for natural order rather than recognising it as the resistance of what feels like a life lived in fragments.
The language of crossing over
Creative transgression offers us a different path.
Creative transgression is the willingness to work with friction rather than avoid it.
'Transgress’ comes from the Latin transgressus. It means to step across, to go beyond limits: not as a wrongdoing, but as a necessary crossing over into new territory. Creative transgression is a form of disobedience, but although culturally we might equate it with immorality or evil, it’s something else entirely. It’s the refusal to shrink your creative ambitions to fit the expectations of others about what's ‘realistic’ for you. It's the courage to treat your creative work with the same seriousness, resources and strategic thinking you bring to your professional projects.
This transgressive approach asks forbidden questions: why can't you bring your professional systems into your artistic practice? Why can't your creative sensitivity inform the way you approach your day job? Creative transgression means being willing to be seen as ‘too much’: too creative for professional spaces, too strategic for artistic circles. It's the practice of showing up as your whole, integrated self rather than performing acceptable fragments.
As Vanya Leilani writes in The Flesh and the Fruit:
Life transgresses everywhere.
Life crosses over the assigned boundaries, disrupting old forms and destroying the edges of the familiar … As living systems break through old structures, new life emerges. The breaking through and the crossing over—the transgression—can be found at the heart of our evolution.
Practising creative transgression
The first time I allowed myself to leave my desk and dance in the middle of the work day—not as a break from productivity but to process an idea I was stuck on—the friction felt intense. I bumped up against every conditioned belief about professionalism that told me this was wrong, inappropriate, illicit. But that friction was a signal I was crossing into necessary territory. I was breaking through the rigid boundaries I'd constructed about what counts as ‘professional behaviour.’
When I began applying ‘business’ systems to my creative practice—setting real deadlines, investing in professional development for my writing and treating creative projects as seriously as my ‘real’ work—my concern was that the two would be mutually exclusive. I worried that creative circles would question my ‘commercialisation’, while professional colleagues would doubt my ‘seriousness.’
In fact, it’s proven to be the opposite.
The transgressive path asks you to use friction as fuel rather than letting it stop you; to recognise that the discomfort of crossing over is often the price of authentic integration.
The territory of integration
The real transformation happens when you learn to harness friction rather than eliminate it. I remember the day I decided to share work before I felt ‘ready’ and submitted an essay that felt too raw, too honest, too much like the real me rather than the polished professional version. The part of me rooted in old conditioning warned that I was about to be exposed and rejected. But the response wasn't rejection—it was recognition. People connected with the humanity in the work; they resonated with the places where my creative and professional selves had merged without apology. If I could turn back the clock, I’d approach the PhD thesis I wrote many years ago very differently: recognising the need for a particular language and approach, but producing something that felt like a truer reflection of me.
When you occupy this transgressive territory, friction becomes a compass rather than something to fight against.
You begin to understand that the discomfort you feel when integrating your creative and professional selves isn't a warning to retreat: it's the sensation of growth; of old forms giving way to new possibilities. You complete projects in a planned timeframe because you've learned to work with the productive friction of discipline, rather than waiting for the inspiration you associate with a frictionless state of being.
The integration creates something neither of your separated selves could achieve alone: a creative professional who uses friction as creative fuel. And you start to generate sustainable impact from the tensions that others try to avoid.
What would you create if you stopped asking permission to be whole?
What project have you been perfecting in private that's ready to breathe in the world? The question is whether you're willing to transgress the comfortable separation that's keeping hostage your fullest expression.
With love, Rachel
Community inspiration
Join me this week for the launch of my Substack Live series Stories of Creative Courage: 45-minute deep dive conversations into creativity, the fear that holds us back from it and ways to move forward with courage.
My first guest is writer and counsellor on Thursday 29 May at 6.30pm UK time/ 1.30pm Eastern/ 10.30am Pacific.
On the subject of Substack Lives, this week I joined and as they went live with the legend that is Derek Sivers (who gives interviews very rarely). Read here the brilliant story about what they learned when the interview was inadvertently deleted—and what it can teach us about letting go of attachment.
Creative inspiration
Books exploring the theme of creative transgression
The Flesh and The Fruit by Vanya Leilani explores how life transgresses boundaries and crosses over assigned limits, disrupting familiar forms to create new possibilities. While it draws on the figure of Eve in the Garden of Eden in the Genesis story that is the foundation of Christianity, it is not at all a ‘religious’ book, but unpicks why transgression is so fundamental to living a creative life.
Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg. Combining Goldberg’s meditative reflection and practical suggestions on how to approach writing, this book encourages us to cultivate a ‘wild mind’ by transgressing the boundaries between ‘proper’ writing and authentic expression by bringing the whole self to creative practice.
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. A classic collection of writings that explores ‘living the question’ and embracing uncertainty as creative fuel rather than obstacle.
Listen to:
‘This is Water’—a commencement speech given in 2005 by David Foster Wallace (and my favourite commencement speech ever). It’s full of wisdom and insight about choosing how to see and breaking free from default thinking patterns (also available as a short book).
Memorable quote of the week
Creativity is disobedient thinking.
– New Zealand film director, Welby Ings
What’s next in your creative journey?
If you're ready to stop avoiding the friction of integration and start using it as creative fuel, I invite you to explore what transgression might look like in your own life. The crossing over begins with a single step across the boundaries you've accepted as permanent—and the willingness to work with whatever friction arises. Your creative essence is waiting on the other side.
Here's how I can support you:
Make an appointment for a virtual coffee (free). I hold 3-4 slots every month for a 20-minute chat so we can either get to know each other, or reconnect. This is for everyone! Perfect if you’re curious about meeting new people and making, or deepening, connections.
Book a 30-minute Creative Breakthrough call (free) to gently uncover the exact fear or limiting belief sabotaging your creative expression so you can finally share your work with confidence.
Read my manifesto for creative courage (free). Follow my story in serial form about the core principles of my creativity, my journey into creative courage and why I founded Wordplay Coaching.
Creative Courage Circle: an ongoing intimate group for deep creative healing and mutual witnessing, so you can express authentically without feeling alone on your creative journey. Membership to this group is by invitation only—please contact me to explore this option.
Bespoke 1:1 coaching: a Creative Transformation journey based on the Essence process—6 months of personalised integration work to embrace your hidden aspects and create from your complete authentic power.