So it’s another Thursday, and I am rushed as usual. I’ve got a lot of plates spinning at work, there’s a business trip to plan for next week, I need to go shopping for food and clothes and I somehow need to find the time to write a post! For many people this may seem like a lot, others will laugh and wish they had a day this barren of line items to complete. When we grow busy some of us might be tempted to simply write off the little things. I can just cram out a post, or I can exercise while sitting in front of the TV. With such a crunch for time it seems as if we are constantly searching for a shortcut, a way to cram even more things into even less time. Yet these shortcuts are often the things that cost us more time in the end.
Our dreams are a prime target when we are looking for things to skimp on. We can just write a story or paint something trivial and be done; quick, easy and painless. Our dreams, our craft, cannot operate in this fashion. They demand quality over quantity. Doing things quickly may seem ideal, trust me as an author I feel your pain, but shortcuts are not answer. Putting half your heart and passion into your goal will not see it done any quicker. It may seem counter intuitive but the fastest way to build our dreams is to take them slow and pay attention to the details. If we build our dreams with a bunch of shortcuts and half measures, we may find that they cost us more time to fix than if we had just done the task correctly the first time.
We use a lot of analogies around here and the idea of our dreams as a building or a structure should not be something new. Imagine if you were designing your dream home; all the amenities, all the space, all the gadgets and gizmos you ever wanted. Would you want them to build the home the way you designed it, or as fast as possible? Surely you wouldn’t mind if the contractors missed a few things right? Like hanging your new TV on a wall crooked. Or maybe they forgot to build a structural wall so the ceiling wouldn’t cave in. Maybe they didn’t do the plumbing right, and the basement floods every time you take a shower. I would not be very happy with my new dream home, or the people who built it.
Our dreams are built brick by brick from our hard work and skill. Each layer of the dream is built on top of the layer below it. As we build we must be careful that we do not botch things up for the next row of bricks. A building is only as good as it foundation. This is why we need to pay attention to the details in the thing or we may find ourselves having to tear out whole sections of wall to fix a simple mistake that had huge ramifications. I see this practically every time I write. First drafts are fun and exciting because they are constantly new. However if I place my characters or setting in a place that can no longer drive the plot forward, well I have to go back and rework things. Whole chapters risk going into the fire when I do this, but it must be done. The story must go forward.
It is the same for any piece of creative work and for every dream. The foundation we lay today is the foundation we work from tomorrow. If we want our dreams to grow we have to take a breath from the rush of daily life and slip into a different state, even if it’s only for a moment. We need to focus on the task and hand and complete it to the best of our abilities. We need to slow down and take care of the small things before they become big things.