Shortcuts

"Everyone is looking for shortcuts. But there are no shortcuts. Greatness is never easy." - Sally Hogshead

Greatness, if you should care to look it up here, has a total of 17 definitions listed. That's a great many for a word which is thrown around fairly carelessly.

Shortcut, in case you were wondering, is much simpler. Only two.

But a powerful two:

1) A route more direct than the one ordinarily taken.
2) A method or means of doing something more directly and quickly than and often not so thoroughly as by ordinary procedure.

That first one doesn't sound all that bad. Doing something more directly than by the one everyone else uses. Instead of trekking over mountains and valleys, go straight to your destination via the expressway.

The internet has certainly created more opportunities for this. There are many more ways now - YouTube, Blogs (like this one), direct publishing of books and music online - than there has ever been for more and more people to become involved in a shorter distance to what they define as "greatness" (in that sense, popularity or success). For some (Justin Bieber) it works out; for others (myself), less so.

But I still wonder if the provision of more opportunities and a decrease in the distance has really accomplished anything.

Part of the process of learning anything or going anywhere is simply the process of becoming something different during the process. As a writer, daily writing forces you to become disciplined to do it. It forces you to do research regularly (like Otis) or it forces you to learn to be able to see deeper and deeper into your thoughts to find more to write about. It makes you learn about grammar and language, and makes you learn to string your ideas together in intelligible ways.

But all of this happens in the quiet of a dark house in the morning, day after day.

Let's say I had suddenly been "discovered" two years ago. Would I be the writer that I am today? I assure you that I would not. The past 3 years have been a period of slow but steady growth in my abilities; the past 3 months have seen them shoot up dramatically. Without the first 3 years of not many posts, I don't have the last 3 years of many posts; without the last 3 years of many posts, I don't have the 3 months of dramatic growth.

I don't like it, you understand. There is some sense in which input equals output, and the amount of time I spend will equate into improvement. On the other hand, there is simply the fact that we all move at our own speed (some of us a great deal slower than others!), and that the process, like mead or cheese or wine or sauerkraut, cannot be rushed.

So are there shortcuts? Yes. Will they yield the outward trappings people confuse for success? Probably. Will it yield the actual results that people - especially those grasping at that success so greedily - really need? Probably not.

To drink my mead before it is done fermenting is foolishness and desperation. To drink my mead after it is finished and aged, perfection.