LIMITS

By Clay Stafford

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I was raised to believe that when I came to an obstacle, it was a personal shortcoming if I did not push through, a personal failure if I did not succeed, and a personal cowardice if I gave up. Those beliefs inhabited the marrow of my bones and festered in the recesses of my brain. I had no natural limits, none of us did, or so I thought and was bred to believe. Even giving credence to such an absurd suggestion felt irresponsible. I knew I and everyone else could overcome anything if we only pushed hard enough. There was no skill we couldn’t learn, no talent we couldn’t expand, no mountain we could not climb. I not only judged myself; I judged everyone. I taught it to my students and in my lectures. We all needed to be responsible for the optimal performance of our lives. It was called being dependable, being responsible, rising to the challenge, working harder and smarter, and pushing through. The push was always highly emotional, causing stress and conflict not only in me but in all my relationships, where others’ performances fell short, but I knew it was worth it. It brought out the best in all of us. Like a winning coach, I pushed myself and those around me. And when they pushed back, I viewed their lack of participation as denial and even laziness. Emotionally wrought, I could never see the mental clarity lost in this thinking. From the dejected faces of those I lived and worked with, it seemed I failed in the very presence that I thought I was being, the one I thought I was protecting. Even in that, I strove to do better.

The satisfaction of control brought me peace, or so I thought. I put myself in charge of my destiny. I oversaw my own future, and nothing could get in the way of that, and very little did. I offered every problem and relationship a doorway that could make things easier for me and everyone around me, but if it was blocked, I had no qualms about going through the wall. Pushing longer, harder, and stronger was, to me, a form of commitment. Staying with a problem until the end of the day, even if that day ran into the night, or even several days without sleep, was applaudable devotion and intention. Accepting limits or growing tired meant one had no self-respect. This was how a meaningful life was to be built; the lives of the great men and women I read in biographies exemplified that. They pushed through because they had something all of us could acquire: character. They built meaningful lives; I would, too. Endurance, discipline, and refusal to quit were the framework of success. Refusal to quit meant refusal to retreat, like cowards, like those who were weak. Even rest itself, I told myself, could wait. “I can sleep when I’m dead” was not uncommon coming out of my mouth in reply to those who were close to me and cared, as I popped my trucker’s caffeine pills, drank my ten Cuban coffees, and my gallon of daily tea.

The cost of this thinking and living with such force didn’t show up immediately. It took decades. That’s the deception we take to heart when we believe the deceitfulness chocked at us by the sycophants of the famous. The famous lied to the watching world, the obsequious flatterers lied to readers of books about great men and women, and then I took those as truths and lied to myself. Sure, the lies gave me extra waking time, or something that resembled it anyway. I learned how to stretch the day thinner, how to draw more from myself than I thought I could. The point that activity didn’t always equal accomplishment, though, was often lost on me. What I gained in hours, I lost, though I didn’t realize it, in life and relational clarity. After decades of this rat race, my attention to the important things, not just the walls to burst through, began to dull. My decisions about where to focus slowed. Simple things began to take longer, though I attributed that to age. Regardless, the very life I had always believed I was protecting by defining my own fate began to resist me.

I began to see, or rather I began to feel, that the very wall that I could not seem to push through was myself. Nothing dramatic happened to show me this. Fatigue didn’t announce itself to me publicly. Nothing in my life collapsed. Feeling tired all the time wasn’t bad; it was my baseline. Yet, focus began to take on the persona of irritation toward my work, myself, and the people around me. I no longer set out to tackle only the big things; small problems now carried more weight than they should have, and small mistakes by others began to irritate me. Life began to feel painful, even at times undesirable. Everything became such a big deal. I found that where I used to slam through walls, I began to make choices not out of intention, but out of relief. I became drawn to whatever would end the discomfort the fastest.

Being successful, I began to wonder, why did I feel at rock bottom? Being high in my profession, having relationships others would envy, having built the life I envisioned, something had to change, though I didn’t know how to give it a name. My choices began to become ill-guided, not from indifference, but from dullness. The part of me that once noticed nuance grew silent. Subtle distinctions in life, work, and people disappeared. I lost my sense of when effort was required and when time was the truer answer. I could still function, but I was compensating, now relying totally on force on everything where attention and inspiration once worked cleanly.

Then came denial, and the emotional cost that followed. Each time I overrode the yokes, big and small, that pulled me down, I taught myself not to listen. Signals that I used to welcome began to annoy me. They were inconveniences to my peace. Discomfort became something to suppress, to submit to silently rather than with understanding. Gradually, all trust eroded, not just in my body, mind, emotions, or energy, but in myself in general. A faint impatience began to settle in, yet flat, a sense that I was now pushing through life, all parts of it, still accomplishing, but rather than moving with it, things were no longer flowing.

As a result of shutting out the world and the world within my own head, my world narrowed. Limits began to change perspective. Everything became about getting through the day. Curiosity, my lifeblood, even began to fade. I knew something needed to be done, but that was the problem. I had everything I could ever want. Recovery from that seemed crazy and certainly ungratefully indulgent. Surprise began to have no place or excitement. My world was perfect. I was not in crisis, yet I was living as though I were. Survival mode replaced presence without my consent. Everyone around me felt it or felt the brunt of what I would not share.

I think the most dangerous part was how ordinary it all felt. Nothing told me to stop. Nothing told me to slow down. Nothing hinted at any type of collapse. Nothing told me I needed to stop bashing walls. No one told me I had a problem, or if they did, I didn’t hear. What I was doing, though, was operating below capacity, and I’d been doing it for way too long. I focused on my limitations to the point of obsession, at the expense of seriousness and gratitude about what I could control. There were limitations that I could not power through, I realized after too many years. And because I didn’t realize this earlier, all limitations, even challenges, began to operate out of the same intensity. Out of the blue, it hit me that if I couldn’t power through certain things that didn’t erase who I was or what I could become despite them. I realized that maybe those walls were there for a reason, that maybe I was meant to be something I didn’t consciously see myself as. The realization was slow and painful, but my life began to change. Centering took the place of warfare.

My limits took on a new light. They were never obstacles; they were misconceptions on my part. They were even guardians of who I was meant to be. The sad thing is, I had been deluded and deluded myself for a lifetime. I recognized the pundits of the super life were frauds. I began to respect those limits. At first, I didn’t respect limits dramatically or perfectly, but rather honestly, and, when I did, something softened inside me like the Grinch’s frozen heart. Efforts on things that were within my limits became cleaner. Decisions within my framework grew quieter and more precise. Life began to deepen again, rather than merely expanding. I began to do less because I stopped slamming into walls and instead spent my time doing more. That was the paradox. In fact, I did better at everything I did. The cost of refusing to stop at natural limitations had been the gradual loss of the very capacities that made my efforts meaningful in the first place. Limits and walls became not challenges to defeat, but invitations to stop long enough to acknowledge, honor, and preserve those things that did matter within the sphere of life I’d been given in which to live. Limits became no more than a beautiful river in my life, a life without a boat, that asked me to choose the path to the left or to the right when it told me in so many ways I could not cross but promised adventure no matter which direction I chose.

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, Killer Nashville Magazine, and the Killer Nashville University streaming service. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/.

Using a 500-Word Diet to Complete Your First Draft

By Terri Bowen

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There are a lot of fun aspects to being a writer: creating imaginary worlds, bringing fascinating characters to life, feeling like a rockstar when someone says they dig your work, and conducting weird research that would look downright creepy under normal circumstances, to name a few. On the other end of that are the not-so-fun parts: writer’s block, wrestling with self-doubt, carving out time to write, or discovering a major plot hole halfway through. Still, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been daydreaming about seeing your book in print since you were a kid. With the gusto of a caffeinated jackrabbit, you decide it’s time to crank out that first novel. You’ve done all the meticulous outlining of a plotter, complete with storyboards and music playlists. Or maybe you’re a rebel, a pantser, prepared to fly by the seat of your, well, pants, occasionally utilizing barely legible notes scribbled on grocery receipts. Either way, you’re ready to dive in. Splash!

Things go along swimmingly at first. Then one day, your regular job gets a little too hectic, leaving you too tired to write. The next day, you have too many errands to run, leaving you with no time to crank out a few pages. Another day, you’ve managed to catch the latest bug circulating in your house, and you can barely breathe through one nostril, let alone work on your book. And so on. Suddenly, two weeks have gone by, and your characters are left feeling abandoned while you berate your lack of discipline and time management. When you finally pick back up where you left off, your momentum is gone, and everything you write sounds more mind numbing than tax return instructions. Then you end up marinating in a vat of imposter syndrome while glumly scrolling through social media to watch the latest viral cat videos.

Sound familiar? If so, you’re probably beyond frustrated and wondering how to get back on track. (And if not, then carry on, you shining star!) I’ve had a lot of writing ups and downs in my day, and the biggest reason for the latter is this: life happens. As Scottish poet Robert Burns once said, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” And since I can function—more or less—without writing, my goal of authoring a book amidst the chaos ends up at the bottom of my to-do list. It starts to feel like a distant, arduous task at best, and a frivolous, ridiculous pipedream at worst. 

As I pondered this predicament a few months ago, I wondered, what if I treat writing as a necessity, as something I require in my life to be the best, most authentic version of me? What realistic, sustainable steps could I take to make that a reality? Would a drastic change in my perspective set things back in motion and keep them there? Bearing in mind my desire to finish my first draft by December 31st, I did the math to see how much I need to write daily to achieve that goal. This led to the creation of the 500-Word Diet. Allow me to explain.

As I recently wrote in an Instagram post, I’m now treating my writing journey like a health regimen. For me, 500 literary calories a day will keep me on a solid path to a finished draft by year’s end. It has become a reasonable daily word count that feels manageable and satisfactory. Instead of adhering to a specific amount of time, I’ve found that I can crank out 500 words even on my busiest, most exhausting days. It frequently ends up being more than that, but even when it’s the minimum, I feel good about my progress.

Like any dietary wellness plan worth its salt, there needs to be some flexibility, cheat days included. If I know I have a day coming up when it will be nearly impossible to accomplish my minimum daily word count, I make a point to cover it in the days beforehand. If I truly need a break, I take one knowing that I need to double my word count the next day. So far, the most I’ve accumulated is 1500 words due to missing two days. In those scenarios, I reminded myself how discouraged and depleted I would feel if I let it snowball any further. To keep myself happy and mentally nourished, I fed my brain—er, worked on my book—and caught back up. And if I’m feeling stuck, I throw in a placeholder note and push forward like I’m plowing my way through a plate of kale. I might not enjoy that particular “meal,” but I know it’s good for me, and I’m not sabotaging my regimen. Put in the work, get it down, and edit later. 

I’m happy to say that this approach has truly changed things for me, not just in terms of productivity, but also my mindset. Each word-count milestone I meet gives me a boost of confidence. I’m doing what I’ve always dreamed of, and it feels pretty good. 

I should also acknowledge that writing a first draft in bite-size pieces isn't particularly new or revolutionary. However, adjusting your perspective and categorizing your writing project as a need—especially if you have a full-time day job, are a parent, or have regular obligations that take up large portions of your schedule—gives you permission to make writing a priority, instead of something to be continuously shuffled until it gets lost in a creative black hole. We have all heard the importance of self-care, and how it enables us to be our best selves, and it's important to remember that dreams and goals are part of that self-care.

Now go tackle that first draft with the attention it deserves—even if it's 500 words at a time.

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Terri Bowen is a writer in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has authored countless poems, short stories, essays, press releases, human interest & financial articles, personal blogs, and screenplays and has nearly completed the first draft of her first novel, a suspense thriller. She is chronicling her writing journey on Instagram (@terribowenauthor).