Aim Small and Build

 This week's quotation is attributed to "Chinese wisdom". It reads, "It is better to do small deeds, than to plan great ones." 

I think the implication here is that we often get overwhelmed by great deeds and give up part way through. 

But I believe that the biggest and greatest deed can be completed, so long as we break them down into smaller parts and patiently complete each smaller part, one at a time.

In her wonderful book for writers, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott includes a chapter on short assignments, because she knows how overwhelming the prospect of writing a whole book can be. She writes, "I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being."

She further quotes E.L Doctorow, who wrote, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

I find the words of both Lamott and Doctorow inspirational. It means that we don't have to panic about completing a big task (like writing a dissertation or a novel or whole service, or cleaning the entire house from top to bottom) but need only tackle the small task at hand.

I try to write for an hour each morning. Some days I breeze through it, the ideas floating up in my mind, eager to be transcribed onto the computer. But far more often, I sit and gaze at the blank page on my laptop and have absolutely no clue what to write. Then I think of Anne Lamott's words and get down a small picture frame I have above my desk (see below) and remind myself that I only have to write one scene, or even part of a scene. And that it won't be perfect, but that doesn't matter. The important thing is to write something, anything. Because that can then be revised and edited.

Even Mount Everest was climbed one step at a time...