I heard from and saw my old friend again this week. Couple morning's ago and there she is. She reminded me of the importance of consistency. Not constancy, but consistency.
She may not be a constant friend, in fact the most I see her is once every few months, but it's consistent like that. I can count on seeing or hearing from her once every six to eight weeks. I can count on seeing her whenever I workout with my group. She's very consistent like that. She is steadfast and I know what to expect and she delivers without fail.
This is what great friends produce, consistency. You come to expect the same thing from them and they deliver. We had a guy named Baldwin in our unit who you could never count on. The entire time in the Army as a private you are constantly proving yourself. Why? Because you want to establish trust between yourself and your leaders and your squad. It's that trust that develops over time and you can build on.
Baldwin not only failed to develop that trust fully, but he undermined the trust completely. So we cut him away. In airborne operations there is one thing you never want to be, a dragged jumper. Exiting the door is one of the more dangerous moments of the jump. It's at the door that anything can happy. A piece of your uniform can get snagged, a loop of your static line could get caught, anything. When that happens you become a dragged jumper. The only thing you can do as the jump master is cut that person away. That's what we did to Baldwin. Once he undermined his squad's and his platoon's trust to a point where he could no longer be trusted, we had to cut him away. It was his lack of consistency that lead to his being cut away.
What's this have to do with writing? Well, you'll remember I'm in the midst of some character development. It's fun to take qualities that are irksome in real life, or even admirable and take them to the next level (more on that in a future post).
Calvin Coolidge wrote about persistence (see my post on it
HERE). Consistency is just as important in my view. I've been writing consistently for over a week now and it's great to see progress on so many fronts. It's that consistency that helps us achieve, not constancy. Constancy can give out and fail. Consistency is the value that we should strive for. Roller coasters are fun, but not if they go on indefinitely.
It's obvious that in my life, as proven by seeing this old friend, that I value that consistency more than constancy. In writing too that seems to be the best to achieve results.
