I think about my arch nemesis–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.
But the problem with trying to be efficient all the time, which is what I would like to do, 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 to get ahead of the game, to save effort, which makes everything daunting. I mean, I can’t even wash the dishes without bunging something on the stove top, shoving some bananas in the freezer for Walt’s shakes, listening to a backlog of podcasts. Not good, this habit. Especially when it comes to writing.
It’s awfully hard to write a simple sentence when you’re considering all the jobs it should be accomplishing. And it’s awfully hard to feel like you’re worth the salt when you’ve tossed out two drafts already, and the third isn’t looking very good. I so hate wasting precious time because there’s just so little of it. If I were efficient, I’d get it all done right the first go round.
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!
We writers need permission to take off with an idea and see where it goes. To improvise, even when it takes us down a dead end, or up the wrong ridiculously steep mountain pass. Because eventually, eventually, we find where we’re supposed to be. We say what we’ve always wanted to say.
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 bad relationships. And we get to change our majors twelve times in college and even drop out for a year to hitch-hike across Europe, as awful as that sounds. Because nothing is really a waste, not if you learn something from the experience. Our mistakes–the ones that seem to have soaked up our precious time–are just necessary steps in a long line of steps that get us to where we’re meant to be.
So here’s a concept. Forget efficiency. Go out and waste some energy and time. In the end, it will all come right. In the end, your writing will sit on the page beautifully.
