My mother used to complain whenever I trotted up to my bedroom without taking the items she’d left for me on the stairs. She’d complain again if I came back down without bringing the trash can she’d asked for, or the jacket I needed for school. Two trips were a waste. Why not combine tasks to minimize the effort? Inefficiency, in her mind,was a sin on par with smearing chocolate sauce on the new white couch, or punching the family dog.
So, I grew up believing that a well-lived life, the kind my mother would approve of, hinged on my ability to kill multiple birds with one stone.
I think about my arch nemisis–efficiency– a lot when I’m on a mountain. Day in and day out, carrying one load up to a higher camp, going back down for another. Breaking camp in the morning, setting it back up all over again at night. Going up an unpleasantly steep slope, only to discover that we’re on the wrong route and we need go back down and find another. The whole exercise seems wasteful. A very poor use of time. A prime example of inadequate planning.
The problem with trying to be efficiencient all the time is that it causes paralysis. A simple action requires us to think about the other three or four things that could be done at the same time, which makes everything daunting, Not good. Expecially for things like writing. It’s awfully hard to write a simple sentence when we’re considering all the jobs it should be accomplishing. And it’s awfully hard to feel like we’re worth the salt when we’ve tossed out two drafts already, and the third isn’t looking very good. Do the job right the first time, my mother always liked to say. ( I don’t suppose I need to mention here that my mother never wrote.)
I love Richard Bausch. He’s a writer I follow on Facebook who I think should publish his status updates. He says.
Just keep going. Say it all out and let it be wrong if it’s going to be wrong for awhile–take the blind alleys and the wrong turns that seem promising and then seem to wilt as you get into the third paragraph of them. That’s utterly normal and healthy and good. Down one of those blind alleys is a door that opens on the technicolor world of the novel you were born to write–and it’s why I’ve always loved that moment in THE WIZARD OF OZ when Dorothy opens that door on Munchkin Land. Seriously. Get the film and look at that: that’s us writers coming to the opening door, the one that gives forth the world of the book in brightness and color and, DAMN, one isn’t in Kansas anymore!
I love Richard Bausch because he gives us writer folks permission to take off with an idea and see where it goes. To improvise, even when it takes us down a dead end. Because eventually, eventually, we find where we’re supposed to be. We say what we’ve always wanted to say. It’s ok with Richard, I would guess, if we forget our jacket in the bedroom and have to go back to get it.
And this concept isn’t just freeing for writers. It means that all of us humans get to waste our time on crappy jobs and reaalllllyyyy bad relationships. And we get to change our majors twelve times in college and even drop out for ayear to hitch-hike across Europe. Because nothing is really a waste. Our mistakes–the ones that seem to have soaked up our precious time–are just neccesary steps in a long line of steps that get us to where we’re meant to be. Mistakes mean we are trying new things. We need to embrace mistakes because we learn from them.
So here’s a concept. Forget efficiency, nasty bastard that it is. Go out and waste some energy and time. In the end, it will all come right.
