Episode Description:
In this episode of What If? For Authors, Claire dives into a deeply personal question: What if I'm a private person? If you feel more comfortable keeping parts of your life under wraps and struggle with the pressure to overshare, this conversation is for you. Claire explores the right to privacy as a basic human need and examines how personal boundaries can be both a shield and a source of strength in your writing career. Drawing on her own experiences and insights from the Enneagram, she discusses how embracing your privacy can empower your creative voice while still allowing meaningful connections with your audience. Tune in to discover strategies for balancing what you share with the world and what you keep for yourself—and learn how being a private person can be a powerful asset in your author journey.
Key Takeaways:
Interwoven Rights: Discover how free speech and privacy are intertwined pillars of creative and personal freedom, and why protecting one often means defending the other.
Legal Protections: Understand the scope and limitations of the First Amendment—not only as a guardian of free expression but also as a shield for your private life.
Erosion of Privacy: Learn about the subtle ways in which political maneuvers and legal gray areas may gradually undermine your privacy and the implications for authors.
Staying Grounded: Explore strategies to remain mindful and resilient amid external chaos, focusing on what you can control: your thoughts, actions, and personal narrative.
Empowered Expression: Embrace the power of choosing what to share and what to keep private, and how this balance can liberate your creative voice.
Why You Should Listen:
If you’re an author or creative concerned about maintaining your personal privacy while exercising your right to free expression, this episode is for you. Claire blends snark, insight, and personal anecdotes to help you navigate these complex issues in a rapidly changing world. Whether you’re worried about government overreach, digital surveillance, or just the erosion of personal boundaries, you’ll gain practical perspectives on how to protect your privacy and empower your writing.
Support the Show:
If you found this episode thought-provoking and helpful, please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform and share it with fellow authors. Every review helps more writers discover this resource.
Join the Conversation:
How do you balance your need for privacy with the demands of building an audience? What are your thoughts on the current state of free speech and personal privacy? Share your insights with Claire by emailing contact@ffs.media or connecting on social media.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor, and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for Authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer. My latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, is all about how to root out the unsustainable practices in our writing life, and how to spot the right opportunities for us when they come along.
Check it out by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain. Today's topic is one that my opinions have recently shifted a little bit on, mostly because the environment in which we're now publishing and marketing has changed. In today's episode, we ask the question, what if I'm a private person? First of all, I think everyone has parts of themselves that they want to keep private and that they deserve to keep private. The right to privacy is, in many ways, a very basic human right upon which everything else can then be built.
So from a purely ideological standpoint, I'm 100 percent with those of you who feel like I'm a [00:01:00] private person, I don't want to necessarily share about my life with my readers. I don't think you ought to if you don't want to. Consent certainly enters into the subject. But I'll talk more about that and the horrors of reality in just a little bit.
For now, let's just talk about personality and the need to be private.
Now the authors I hear this from the most, those who say they're private people and that a lot of the publishing advice floating around doesn't work for them, are Enneagram type fives. These are the most private type in the Enneagram system. This comes from the fives pattern of moving away, withdrawing, as a way to get their needs met.
And because fives like to hold on tight to information as a way to feel competent, their personal information tends to be something that they hold on tightly to and withdraw from the sight of others. One of the things I really love about Fives and why I think they make great friends is that they tend to do that same thing with your private information.
They [00:02:00] understand the importance of being that vault and not sharing it. So if you tell them something and you're in their inner circle, it ain't going anywhere. But other types Could be private people as well. Sometimes we want to keep things private because we're ashamed of them, but sometimes we want to keep things private because it just matters so much to us that we don't want to let other people besmirch it in some way, right?
I know that for a while after getting my endometriosis diagnosis, there were a lot of people I was just not going to tell about it. Most people for a while. I only told a few people at first and some of the reactions I got made me want to stop sharing that information with people. So for instance, I would say, yeah, I finally got this diagnosis.
I've been trying to get for 15 years and now I'm on this medication and it's helping. And I feel great. I feel the best I felt since I was really young. And then they would reply, Oh, you should try this and this and this. [00:03:00] So these were not doctors I was talking to, these were just white women. Two of them I had just explained what endometriosis was, because they didn't know, and yet they had a recommendation.
So that made me not want to tell anyone else about it. Now, I had to figure out why, and eventually I landed on the fact that getting the diagnosis was such nice validation after a decade of being told that my pain wasn't real and that it should just be accepted, not looked into any further, and when I shared that with those friends, Their reactions had been to invalidate my experience of feeling better by ignoring what I was saying about how the medicine was working, and then instead insisting that they knew better about my body by recommending shit like oregano oil and water.
I mean, I know they meant well. But, no, I'm not going on the carnivore diet to treat my endometriosis. Yes, that was another recommendation. So show me some fucking research or listen to [00:04:00] me when I say that things are better and I feel great. Just be happy with me, right? So, I learned that lesson that I was not ready to share yet because I just wanted to keep the validation for myself.
So I was private. I wanted to be able to sort of revel in the fact that finally a doctor listened to me. And I wanted to be able to do that without people close to me taking cheap shots at it. That invalidated my experience. Also, I know that my audience is very heavily skewed toward white women, so I am begging you, white women, my fellow white women, when someone says their treatment is working, do not heap on your recommendations.
I know you mean well. But after being subjected to a lifetime of people invalidating your experience with your body, you may unintentionally be passing it along to someone else. Just a little disclaimer from my personal experience that we can bring some mindfulness [00:05:00] to.
Now let's talk about the Enneagram Triads. So these are associated with certain negative emotional themes that we're going to deal with for most of our lives. And they can give us an interesting framework for examining our relationship to privacy. For types two, three, and four, the emotion that's going to be very prevalent throughout your life is shame.
And this is not a useful emotion, but this means that a lot of the things that you want to keep private are likely things you're ashamed of other people knowing. So this could be failure, what you perceive to be failure, being kind of boring or ordinary, being selfish, whatever it is, just notice if you're spending a lot of time and energy keeping that private, because that's where the energy around privacy may be.
Not helping you may be wasted. It may be draining you when it doesn't need to, when it comes to shame. One of the best things we can do to address it is to talk about it. Shame convinces you that you need to keep a secret, that there's something wrong about you, that you [00:06:00] should keep secret. So just.
Telling it to someone you trust starts to make the shame go away. So that's where privacy starts to get a little bit, is it helping or hurting? Just do some work around that shame and that'll free you up so you don't feel like you're having to hide things from your audience all the time as an author.
For types 7, you're going to be dealing more with the emotional patterns of anxiety. And obviously we all have anxiety, but this is more anxiety about scarcity and resources. I don't have what I need. I'm unprotected. People are trying to steal my resources. That sort of thing. 5, 6, and 7s tend to run into trust issues as a result, and a lot of the craving for privacy that can come from that, rather than a true need to protect yourself, it's from that anxiety.
In other words, you may be going overboard and again, wasting energy trying to keep things private that wouldn't threaten you in any way if you shared them. And then 8s, 9s, and 1s, um, this triad is looking at anger, [00:07:00] which is really about control, autonomy. A lot of the need for privacy for these types comes from not feeling in control.
If they don't know about me. They can't control me, right? So ones keep the imperfect and ugly parts of themselves hidden, so as to not give anyone an upper hand. Nines withdraw into themselves, so that nobody can get control of their inner world. And eights don't share what they perceive to be their weaknesses, so that nobody can use those against them.
It all boils down to control for this triad.
What I'm not telling you is that you need to be a completely open book. I'm never going to say that, and I think there's a lot of wisdom in why that's not the approach you want to take in the world we're living in as an author. Now, it may be that this need for privacy is being overblown in your personal relationships and causing damage to them, if that's the case.
You might get a lot of mileage out of examining how tightly you're holding onto privacy at the expense of connection with others. But when we're looking at our author [00:08:00] life, readers don't really need access to all of you. Some may feel entitled to it, and that's their problem. I think it's important to feel empowered to make a decision about what you share and what you don't share with your audience.
Some authors share a lot, to the point where people go, wow, they're such an open book. But I promise you, even they aren't a completely open book. Even they have things that they're not sharing. They're just comfortable sharing things that you aren't comfortable sharing. That doesn't mean that they don't keep anything private.
So sometimes I'll hear authors say, oh, but such and such author talks about her personal stuff and her readers love it, so I should talk about that same kind of personal stuff. I'll just say that to her, it probably doesn't feel personal. But there's something that feels personal to her, and I bet she's not sharing that.
Sometimes we misattribute an author's success to being an open book, but that's not really the [00:09:00] case. You don't have to feel pressure to share things about yourself that you don't feel comfortable with. Now, if you want to challenge yourself over time because you recognize that you're uncomfortable sharing, Anything about yourself, and that's something you'd like to work on, you can certainly do that.
Just try it in small doses. Also, the world expects a lot more transparency and personal sharing from women than it does from men. So Bringing some awareness to that can help deflate the pressure we feel as women to share openly and honestly about our inner world. Just remember, you don't need to be vulnerable with people who don't deserve it and who would exploit that.
Women are socialized from a very young age to share more of themselves than they're comfortable with in many ways. And I certainly see that come through in some of the attitudes that female authors, , express. About the pressure to be open and honest and vulnerable with their audience. If [00:10:00] you want to be vulnerable about something, absolutely, but do it because it makes you stronger, not because you feel obligated to.
Now, here's a quick, friendly reality check for those who feel like their lack of success or their struggle to break through to the next level is a result of their need to be a private person. A lot of readers don't give a single shit about who you are. They just want to read your books. If you're a private person who doesn't want to share about yourself, then go after those readers.
Relationship building with your audience is a tool, but it's not necessarily the best tool. It's certainly not the only tool. And it's definitely not the best tool if you just suck at it. And some of us do. So if that's the case, use the other tools you have. That's fine. I figure some people listening to this are going to feel a lot of relief in that the reminder that many if not most readers out there [00:11:00] don't need to know anything about you to enjoy your books.
But I've also found that everyone has something they're willing to share with their readers. It might not be something personal about you, but it might be something that interests you. It could be a topic you're passionate about, or it could be stories you overheard at a coffee shop. It doesn't have to be personal to be something that builds connection with your readers.
Everything we share with other people says something about us, who we are, what we value. It lets people know us a little bit more. And that's not to scare the private people, that's only to say, you're already doing these things. And they probably feel comfortable to you.
Sometimes we attach labels to ourselves like, I'm a private person, and while that can help us build a sense of identity and sometimes give us solace like, it's okay for me to be this way, it can also keep us from seeing the parts of ourselves that aren't like that.
If you say, I'm a private person, you may be missing all the ways you're actually quite [00:12:00] open and share freely without reluctance. So really, it's more like you're a private person in some ways and open in others. And that's true for pretty much everyone. A lot of the deep work I do with authors is simply helping them realize they're not seeing all the parts of themselves that are there.
If you define yourself as, say, a thoughtful person, and you over identify with that, then you're most likely not seeing the ways you sometimes act recklessly or make decisions based on emotion rather than thoughtfulness and logic.
That, of course, doesn't mean that you don't. Do those things. It just means you're not seeing it because you've defined yourself in this narrow way as a thoughtful person. We don't see the things about ourselves that don't fit into the stories we tell about ourselves. For instance, you might say, I'm a private person.
But then you pour the deepest parts of yourself, your hopes, your dreams, your sorrows, into your characters and share those with the entire world. [00:13:00] That seems like pretty open sharing to me.
So if you consider yourself to be a private person, it might be interesting to explore the ways you're already quite open with the people in your life and your readers. You might not be as private as your definition has led you to believe. Now, what I'm not asking you to do is look at all those places where you've been sharing.
Freak out about the vulnerability and shut it all down. In fact, I suggest the opposite. Look at all the ways you've been sharing that you may not have noticed and how it's been okay. Maybe it's even worked out really well. That might inspire you to poke around in the places where you've been holding things very private and ask if you're holding on to too much out of fear.
Maybe there's some stuff there that you're actually ready to let go of, to not hold so closely to the vest. And if you're not, if everything needs to stay private, that's fine. Again, you're entitled to hold whatever you want private. That's just a little [00:14:00] treat of human rights that we get, for now. Uh, and on the topic of privacy and human rights, there's been a big shift for American authors, we have to acknowledge that.
And I hate to even bring this up because God, it's such a bummer, but it's the reality we're living in. And state you live in, are trying to legislate on private matters to the extent of such overreach that many of us feel the government in our homes and our bodies on a daily basis.
Ugh. It's like a poison you want to extract from your veins, but can't. I mean, you can, but it takes a lot of practice to connect with your body.
And the point of this overreach is to disconnect people from their body, to disconnect them from their power. The message is that your body, your private information, your inner world belongs to them, not you. The creep of this has been going on for a while, and admittedly, it is nice to know that your spouse can't physically abuse you [00:15:00] without punishment from a governing entity. Presumably. Though blind eyes have been turned in the past, but this is why when Roe v. Wade was overturned, there were plenty of people who didn't support abortion, who were still very concerned about knocking down this pillar of individual privacy.
Now, the propaganda that framed it as a purely moralistic stance, you either care about life or you're a baby killer.
And that was incredibly effective at obfuscating the real alarming implications for everyone's right to privacy as a citizen of the U. S. But make no mistake that the point was always to remove barriers to power over citizens. And I think that's pretty obvious to see in retrospect now that we're losing so much of our privacy.
Now, if you don't agree with me, you're probably thinking, don't get political, Claire. That's what people who don't agree with the speaker tend to say. But when we're talking about privacy, we're already in the realm of politics. I didn't bring it into this conversation. [00:16:00] It is always there. Some people simply like to pretend that it's not.
And I'm not that kind of person. Y'all know me. It's there, let's name it. Politics is just an agreement of how we want to live together in a community and society. Anyway, so everything is political because the way we live our lives affects those around us. Anyway, I think current governmental shenanigans make our private world even more valuable and precious than it's ever been, and I think it's something worth protecting.
Now, I'm not telling you to become paranoid, but a certain amount of novel caution and awareness may be required in these times, may be welcome. So, keep going, don't tune out. I want to be clear that wisdom, discretion, and adaptability to the reality of our environment do not require us to be fearful or panicked.
So when I talk about this paradigm shift I'm seeing, I hope you'll simply notice where the fear comes in and let [00:17:00] it thrash around without listening to it too much. As authors, a lot of us have been Vetting what we share with the world through the approach of share unless there's a clear reason not to.
But there might be some wisdom in reversing that and instead using the approach of don't share unless there's a clear reason to share. At least when we're looking at the audience. I'm not talking about what you share with your trusted friends. Keep sharing with them. Keep that connection strong. But there are some things we become comfortable sharing publicly to our readers, on our email lists, on social media, without thinking much about it. Right? Our schedules, identifying information about our neighborhood, our kids names, our favorite writing spots.
These are things we might not want to share so freely anymore. We might just pause and consider. The benefit versus the possible consequence. Part of pulling back might involve [00:18:00] realizing how much you've already shared, followed by a little freak out, right? That's normal. Nothing you can do about the past though, so focus on progress over perfection as you sort of make this transition.
Create new policies for yourself.
Being in charge of your privacy also means practicing a little more online hygiene. I promise I'm not trying to scare you, but most people don't realize how much of their personal information is available to buy and sell online and how frequently and rapidly that's happening. It's almost certainly becoming a messier situation now that we have members of our government who are criminals accessing all the information that the government has ever collected on us, including social security numbers, taxes, bank accounts, and whatever, you know, investigative files might exist with our names in them.
It's important not to throw up our hands and just give up. That's called complying in [00:19:00] advance, and it's a big no no when it comes to resisting authoritarian power. So just return as much as you can to the central tenet of liberation work, which is you control what you do. Don't abdicate the one thing you truly have influence over just because it feels like the bad guys are winning right now.
That's not enlightenment. That's not going to help you stay in the game.
In a lot of ways, this large scale grab for our personal information can be a gift of a wake up call. It can help us realize how much we've assumed we had control over things that we never actually had control over. And we start to recognize what we do have control over, things we've been maybe ignoring or neglecting.
our influence on. When it comes to privacy, I'm not telling you to hide away, but knowing what's what, seeing things as they are rather than through fear tinted lenses, [00:20:00] helps us make wise decisions for our career. So ask yourself, is what I want to share with the world meaningful enough to me and my reason for writing that I'm willing to assume the risk of relinquishing privacy over it?
Sometimes the answer will be yes, sometimes it'll be no. But we want to recognize that it is a decision, so that we don't let old patterns, which may have worked well, well enough, before, lead us to an unexpected and unwelcome outcome in this new environment. So I am kind of a snarky asshole on my personal social media, and I do not.
I do not have, you know, any sort of affinity for fascists and bigots. I don't post as many incendiary things as I used to because I don't think all of them are important enough to draw that kind of negative attention to myself. And previously I didn't have to worry about that as much, you know. years ago.
But sometimes now I think, you [00:21:00] know, oof, this is incendiary, but eh, fuck them, and I post it, even though I know it might get me on some McCarthy esque blacklist. But that pause to recognize the reality of the situation is the important part. You're going to make a decision one day that you may not have made the other day, but just recognizing that there is a decision.
We each can make the best decisions we can with the information we have, but when we're not aware that there is a decision to be made, we default to whatever patterns are most familiar. You might be sort of feeling in your body how unfit some of your old patterns are for the new reality we're living in.
Practicing mindfulness, slowing down when we recognize we're in a fear state so that we can think and feel more clearly is the path to recognizing more decision points. So if you're wondering, what if I'm a private person, I'll say that it's okay to keep some things private, for sure. You're [00:22:00] probably also open in ways you may not be seeing, though. The things we keep private can be beautiful gifts to ourselves. Reality can't get at them, and sometimes that's exactly what we need to keep going.
No matter what, you always have the right to decide who you share what with. So don't be afraid to exercise that right. Being mindful and purposeful about what you do share might be a new approach for you, but consider trying it on for size.
Keep the separation between public and private as clear as you can in your life right now. Spend some time intentionally sorting through what you want to keep private and what you want to share. Because as important as privacy is, sharing is also crucial. We share parts of ourselves to let others know they aren't alone, that we're all fighting this out together.
That life is tough, but it's also wonderful, and it's improved by the company of the people we love and [00:23:00] trust. Inside each of us, there will always be a tension between public and private, and that's our responsibility to tend to. If you're sitting there like, oh great, one more thing to think about, I get it.
We probably will want to, on some level, rid ourselves of the tension between public and private by saying, screw it. And maybe spewing everything far and wide. Or we may be tempted to go in the opposite direction, shutting everything out to keep as much as we can private. But neither of these extremes exercises wisdom or discretion.
Maintaining that internal polarity between public and private is what allows us to decide on a moment by moment basis what approach will get us what we want with as few negative side effects as possible.
When we try to relieve ourselves of that inner tension entirely, we lose mindfulness. We lose the flexibility we need to make sound decisions for our author career.
[00:24:00] I don't feel like this episode offers a whole lot of concrete answers, but hopefully it gives you an opportunity to think deeply about the tension between public and private that lives inside of you. The human need to keep something for yourself, and the human need to share and connect. Both are important.
Which side of that continuum do you tend to lean toward by default? What interesting new results might you find in your author career if you experimented with leaning a little more in the other direction? These decisions are your responsibility and, most importantly, under your control.
I think it's important that we try to keep our attention directed at those decisions and not get distracted by the three ring shit circus playing out in the media. You can't control those breaches of your privacy. So take whatever action you can, maybe giving your representatives an earful, and then return your attention to [00:25:00] where it's most effective.
And that's doing the inner work. Also learn about encrypting and securing your digital life to maintain the level of privacy you prefer. And don't let fear keep you from sharing what makes you human with others. Connection is just as important as privacy, maybe even more so in these weird fucking times.
And that's it for this episode of What If for Authors, before I let you go, I do wanna mention that I've launched a new website, liberated writer.com, and it's the place to go. If you wanna book one-on-one time with me, join my group coaching or sign up for the next session of the Liberated Writer five week course.
That's liberated writer.com. Go poke around and make sure you're signed up for my email list. Thanks so much for listening, I'm Claire Taylor, and I hope you'll reach out if you ever think I could be of use. Until next time, happy writing.