The creative power of saying no

And the price some of us pay for it

My daughter and her favourite word.

'No' is my five-year-old daughter's favourite word. That’s why she wrote it on this sign at school and proudly held it aloft for the world to see.

In any given scenario, she knows precisely what she wants (more often than not, cat whiskers drawn on her cheeks before she even contemplates leaving the house on weekends), and what she doesn’t (most foodstuffs). Saying ‘no’ is the most natural thing in the world to her. And we let her have them.

When I was a girl, my own parents let me have my ‘no’s as well.

So I said ‘no’ to countless social and extra-curricular activities, preferring instead to spend hours alone in my bedroom, absorbing and writing music and stories.

Those ‘no’s enabled me to say ‘no’ as a teenager when my student radio peers at uni wanted me to interview a troupe of male comedians on air – all of whom insisted on being completely naked throughout.

I went on to say ‘no’ in my 20s when I was offered a high-profile promotion at a major media company.

And I said ‘no’ in my early 30s when someone head-hunted me for a Big Tech PR role and tried to feed me scripted lines to say in the subsequent interview that would bag me the job.

In so many of these instances, I can't even explain where my refusal came from, other than a ~feeling~ that something wasn’t sitting quite right with me at that particular moment.

But, years later, I’m thinking about the paths those micro-defiances took me down.

Because when you’re a busy-brained girl or young woman who expresses herself authentically, you get sidelined. Ostracised. Mocked. Forgotten. Harmed, even. Hell, historically, many of us were burned.

And so, eventually, our 'no's get quieter and quieter, with fewer and fewer people around to hear them. Our inner lakes of ideas dwindle to nano-droplets. Our in-built creative essence is still there, but it’s barely noticeable – even to ourselves. We learn that saying ‘no’ often doesn’t keep us safe. And it certainly doesn’t make it easy to find and keep friends and jobs and relationships.

So, perhaps we start saying 'yes' more often, against our instincts. We go to places that make us feel uneasy, drink too much, work too much, don't get enough sleep, absorb fewer stories and less music. Until, eventually, we’re so busy saying ‘yes’ in order to try and find someone – anyone – that will hear our ‘no’s that we’ve lost the ability to even say the very word we need the most.

“I hadn’t really imagined people living this way — simply missing the capacity to generate their own joy, or really even to effectively pursue it.”
Chris Cain, co-president of musical entertainment entity We Are Scientists

I’ve written a lot about how I’m a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to discovering my creative ambition. But the above quote really got me thinking. It’s an observation about a bleak female protagonist in a book I’ve not read, buried in one of my favourite Substacks, and it led me to contemplate what it’s been like to grow up as a woman who lives for ideas but doesn’t naturally possess the energy or charisma to push through the riskiness of life and make them a reality.

Because I believe that creativity – our “capacity to generate [our] own joy” – exists inside everyone. But, for so many women, it’s conditioned out of us, slowly but surely, in our teens, twenties and thirties. It’s only now, in my early forties, with kids who are no longer babies, in a stable relationship and with a solid network of forever friends that I finally feel safe enough – socially, financially, professionally, mentally and physically – to even consider expressing myself authentically again. To let ‘no’ exist once more.

Hang on, isn’t this meant to be a newsletter about writing and books and stuff?

Oh yeah, shit.

*thinks*

OK, here’s a link: three of the authors who’ve been shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize are called ‘Paul’. That’s more Pauls on the shortlist than women. Pauls who’ve probably, also, said ‘no’ quite a lot in the past. Who’ve rejected the mainstream and pursued their interests and passions and have found great literary success by doing so.

I haven’t read any of the shortlisted novels, though they all sound incredible. I don’t doubt that each of the Pauls is a wildly talented writer and artist whose prose and ideas fully deserve to be recognised in this way.

But I can’t help but think about all the Paulines out there who’ve not only never had the chance to tell their stories, but have totally forgotten that their stories ever existed. Who maybe once had hearts and heads full of ‘no’s but were too scared to speak them.

In so many instances, saying ‘no’ isn’t just important for women, it’s vital. Our hunches matter, and have been informed by generations of harm and suffering. We must listen to them, even if it doesn’t feel safe to say them out loud. But for every single one of our refusals, there’s always a price to be paid. And, for some, the debt simply becomes too big to overcome. And they do permanently lose the capacity to generate or pursue joy.

🎵🎵🎵

For some of us, though, the loss is temporary.

25 years ago, I wrote a piece of music. I play it often, and thought the piece was complete. However, this week, I was playing away and noticed that it was missing something. For the first time, I said ‘no’ to the muscle memory of the song I’d played for decades, and out flowed the bridge, as if it had always existed inside of me but had only just had the chance to breathe. Hearing that new chord progression felt like magic – like real-life time travel.

I’ll never get those two-and-a-half decades back in which my creativity shrank to almost nothing. But I’ve returned to myself, at last. And my fear is no longer dominating my joy. The only person to witness and recognise my joy might only ever be myself, but surely that’s what counts the most?

Most of all, though, I’ve realised this: saying ‘no’ isn’t actually a refusal at all. It’s choosing to say ‘yes’ to yourself.

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Other stuff I read to help me untangle this:

• Letters to My Weird Sisters* by Joanne Limburg.

• Strong Female Character* by Fern Brady.

• Poem for a Daughter by Anne Stevenson (read in this magnificent anthology*).

• This incredible essay by author, artist and mother, Matilda Leyser.

• And, as ever, I returned to Lean Out* by the late, great Dawn Foster.