We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jocelyn Holst Bolster a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jocelyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

One thing I have really learned over years of pursuing a career in the creative arts is that I have to place importance and worth on my art if I want the world to do the same. Because I work from home and set my own hours, people around me tend to think that means I don’t work, or I have all the time in the world to take care of non-work errands. I used to get frustrated by the attitudes of family and acquaintances who would either tell me how lucky I am because I don’t work, or shame me for not working. I learned that I have to explain that even though I don’t go to an office or punch a clock, my creative work is still work. Even after my first book was published, people still had a hard time believing it wasn’t a hobby. The positive side of this is that while I’m advocating for my art to others, I gain a sense of confidence and trust in my creative work. Through years of affirming art as a valid and worthwhile professional pursuit, I came to really believe it. I come from this line of Midwest Methodists who place a strong value on work ethic, and I now enjoy explaining that I am just as dedicated to my work as my family members are. The mischaracterization of myself as an artist, or my art, turned out to be one of the strongest forces for respecting and valuing my creative work.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

After trying in my youth to prove to myself that I was different, I discovered in my thirties that I am exactly like everyone else. This realization was strangely comforting. Because it is our shared emotions and experiences that make life interesting after all. I took a gap year after high school that turned into a gap decade during which I traveled and met wonderful, strange, and wildly different people. I have worked around 40 different jobs and lived in seven countries. Originally I thought I would pursue a career in musical theatre, but by the time I got around to going to college I had the heart of an English major so literature it became. I still love to sing and dance; I am the choreographer for a youth theatre, and I sing in a rock band. But something about being the writer of the songs is more fulfilling to me than being the interpreter of another’s writing. Singing an original song in front of an audience is the scariest, most vulnerable thing I have ever done and it’s still terrifying and thrilling no matter how long I’ve done it. My main focus however, is fiction. I write novels and screenplays. Without consciously choosing to, I think my work focuses on exactly what I said in the first sentence: our shared emotions and experiences. My writing tends toward realistic relationships and interactions and the truth about the human experience that underlies them all. My hope is that my writing will help the reader connect to others and maybe even to a part of themselves. One of the magical things about fiction is its ability to connect people across space and time and I hope that my writing can do that for someone out there.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

A big surprise and reward I have found from writing is that is has the ability to heal myself and others. Sometimes I end a story or a song and discover that all along I have been writing about something locked in my subconscious without realizing it. Art has this beautiful superpower to reach into the dark corners of our consciousness and shine a light, tell you other people experience the same thing, and heal the wounds there. It’s an incredible side effect of crafting a story when it happens to me, but when a reader comes to me and expresses the same thing, it’s a wondrous reward.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When my son was born it wasn’t so much as a pivot, as getting hit by a freight train and clinging to the front of the engine as we hurtled into oblivion. Before that I had been happily riding my bicycle down a winding country road, fresh flowers in the basket, humming, on my way toward getting an MFA in creative writing. The train came out of nowhere and next thing I knew the bicycle was smashed, my MFA was obliterated, and I was going the opposite direction. Fast. I had two options: figure out how to be an artist AND a mother, or become the mayor of Crazytown. I admit, I ruled Crazytown with an iron fist for awhile, but the moment I learned that prioritizing my art was also prioritizing my mental health, everything shifted. Honoring our authentic selves is so important. And learning to pivot and hold on to the monumental importance of our creativity when life throws curve balls (or freight trains) at us is the only way to survive as an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jocelynholstbolster.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/jocelyn.bolster

Image Credits
Verna Rolland