Show notes
Monday Motivation – The Limits of Your Feelings
This talk is inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous quote, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” The concept is so deeply impacted me that it has reframed my understanding of what it means to grow, not just in the writing life, but in life in general.
A good example of this quote is a recent experience I just had. I’m teaching myself how to be more handy for some upcoming home projects. One of the things I need to do is learn how to frame, which is basically how to make a wall. For about a week I was watching all of these videos on framing and just couldn’t understand what they were saying, because I couldn’t follow the language. And then, finally, I found a YouTube video where a guy went step by step to talk through framing terminology. So, what is a header, cripple stud, plate, king stud, nailer, level, plum, and on and on. I watched the video like three times, writing down the terms and definitions, and then, went and watched a video on framing.
I’m sure you already know what happened. Boom. I understood the video. I could follow the language, and so I understood, at least intellectually, how to build a wall. Now, who knows what happens when I go to do it, but the point is I can now engage with all the training and informational videos I want. I know the language.
What’s the language of writing? What is to story what plum is to framing?
The language of writing is feeling. Not the definition or explanation of feeling on the page, but the writer herself feeling emotion and then writing that feeling.
Oftentimes we are afraid of feeling. We don’t want to feel hurt because it hurts. We don’t want to feel joy because soon it will fade. We are afraid to feel fear. I say those things to you and to me. I feel hurt and fear. Even though here I am, a podcast host speaking into a microphone, I am just like you.
For a long time, I was afraid of my feelings, and so I numbed myself. I used video games, busyness, alcohol, friends, willful blindness, mindless media consumption… anything in an attempt to not touch feelings that were locked inside of me.
This happened with my first book. The book stalled thirteen times for various reasons—plot problems, character problems, my sheer boredom while writing it. I used my head to write those first thirteen drafts and the story was soulless—like a calculation of what should or shouldn’t happen on the page.
But, then, for whatever reason, and I wish I could remember, I made this huge switch. I excavated myself and I wrote my feelings into the page. The story flipped overnight. Instead of some lame plot, the main character came alive. I saw him as I saw myself—in 3d. To write his story, I went into the hard places—my regret, my feeling like an alien in my own life, my failures, my fears, the times people expected something from me and I didn’t deliver. I let myself feel those things that were bubbling right under the surface. And what came out onto the page was good, even though I wasn’t a good writer.
The point is, if I wouldn’t have let myself feel those things, I would have never grown as a writer. I’d have stalled, unable to access the emotion needed to really make have a soul.
To rewrite Wittgenstein’s quote for writers- “The limits of my feeling are the limits of my writing. The limits of my feeling are the limits of my writing.”
You can’t write joy without allowing yourself to experience joy. You can’t write rage without allowing yourself to experience rage. The writing will be flat, like looking at the emotion through a buffer. Powerful writing happens in and through our emotions.
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