“I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad." Helen Keller

Many of us operate as two people when we write. Initially, we’re the creative writer who is getting it all down on paper or screen—wonderful prose, lyrical poetry, fiction or fact, it doesn’t matter. We are on a roll! We are on fire! We are writing our hearts and souls and minds out!

And then the other person takes over—the nasty executive editor who criticizes every thought, word and punctuation mark, who laughs at our sad parts and fails to chuckle at the funny ones, who sends us fleeing from our desk convinced that our limitations are too great to overcome.

It’s challenging to strive for perfection when we’re not certain it’s within our grasp But that shouldn’t stop us from trying to improve, both as writers and as people.

We can’t let our concept of our limitations shake us, break us, destroy our dreams or deflect us from our goal.

Limitations exist to challenge us to overcome them, not to stop us from trying.