Take it to the limit.

Limits make us more creative, and make our creative work better.

The New York Times ran a series in its wellness newsletter last week about creativity. Each day, they sent out little tips about how to bring more creativity into your life in small, attainable ways. One day, the idea they proposed was to give yourself rules — that rules make you more creative.

Which got me thinking about this little newsletter I send out, with its strict 500 word length. Every time I write one of these, I spend almost as much time as I did drafting it figuring out how to get it to be exactly 500 words. I’m sure no one but me would know, but it’s a fun game and it can force a certain turn of phrase or cut the fat in a way that often makes the writing better.

Cutting the fat.

My friend Amelia founded a reading series called 5 Things years ago in Austin, and over the next five years or so it was hosted by a series of my pals. The format of the show was that five writers each read an original five-minute piece. I read in it a few times—they used to call me if someone dropped out and I would swoop in like Alec Baldwin to SNL to sub in—and I always loved the part of the writing where I had to get it down to five minutes. It gave things a structure, and over time, you learned the rhythm of a five-minute piece. Where the beats needed to hit, how to bring the audience along.

Portrait of the artist reading in Five Things in a glitter skirt, circa 2010.

I am performing in Story-oke here in Austin tonight, and it’s the first time in a long time I’ve written a five-minute piece. The format of this show is that you read a short piece about a song that is meaningful to you, and then you karaoke that song—which is such a brilliant idea and I’m so excited to be part of it. For years, I’ve been singing songs at karaoke and wishing everyone in the room understood how meaningful and beautiful and important these songs were, how profound our connection to these songs were, and now I’ll just get to explain the backstory before I sing. A dream come true.

The limits for Story-oke once again helped make my work better. It was about six minutes on first read, so I went through with my little machete, killing my darlings. Figuring out which details to sacrifice, which details would be funny enough to earn their space. Thinking about which details matter to me but wouldn’t matter to anyone else because I’m 41 now and the subtle references to the pop culture of 2005 won’t be legible to a good chunk of the audience. Deciding to keep in a few of the little hellos to my age peers because why not—not everything has to cater to these hordes of youths.

Limits to your creativity are like pressure on a chunk of carbon: the boundary makes something more beautiful than it was without it.