Every breaking of limits starts with the words “I wonder if I could.” How many times has this happened to you? Most of the limits we set upon ourselves are self-imposed. I could never run a marathon. I could never kayak down a whitewater river. I could never stop eating chocolate.
(Okay, maybe that one is impossible.)
Over the years I’ve let limits define me plenty of times. “I’m not a poet,” I’ve proclaimed. “I don’t write flash fiction either.” I also didn’t think of myself as someone who would ever get married. Or thought getting a pedicure was a good thing. Or someone who could finish a novel. I’ve done all those things.
Lately I’ve decided to stretch my writing and my life by doing things that I thought I never could. In some cases the results have been scary, like the time I dumped an inflatable kayak in the Grande Ronde River and had to swim for shore. Other times it has been puzzling. A short, very short story had been nudging me for years, but I never wrote it because, well, I don’t write flash fiction. Guess what? Turns out that I do write flash fiction after all. What was I waiting for? Why did I let fear of failure hold me back?
I don’t know about you, but I have been stuck in my genre because it is what I do well. Writing for me is often hard, truncated by a ten-hour-a-day job and all the other trappings of life. I am lucky to manage short spurts of creativity. It is easier to go with a flow that I know.
So how do you break out of your limits? For me, it’s usually been when things aren’t working well. My novel might be stalled. Maybe I haven’t published a single word for months. Adversity inspires me to change things up.
The hardest step of course is the first one. When I injured my foot and couldn’t run several years ago, I ventured to the pool. Having had no real swim training, I floundered down the lap lane, inhaling chlorine, stopping to touch the comforting reality of the wall. When I finally completed a lap, another swimmer looked at me with pity.
“You poor thing,” he said.
Then he said the words of doom: “I’ve taught many women your age how to swim.”
That would have been enough to send me back to what I did best: run. If I could have. If my foot hadn’t throbbed with pain every time I moved. Instead, it made me grit my teeth and flounder through one more lap. Then two. Eventually I was swimming a mile or more. Pretty good for someone who said she would never be a swimmer.
Writing is really no different when you go out on a limb. The older I get, the more I want to stretch my life and that includes writing. Who knows how many more years I have left to do this? I could spectacularly fail at poetry, but why not try it?
The possibilities are endless. Short story collections? Science fiction? Bring it on! Going out on a limb can bring enthusiasm and excitement, as well as a dash of fear, into your life. Who is with me?
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