The wisdom of indirection

I am by nature a very direct person. I say what I mean. If I say I have no preference about what we eat for dinner, then I really have no preference. My instinctual approach to anything is to go directly for it.

Yet I have learned that sometimes an indirect or even apparently off-target path is the best route to a goal.

For example, if you want to sell someone a service and make a business that will survive for the long term, the last thing you should do is try to sell that person. Instead, you should focus completely and utterly on the person's needs in your service area and try to figure out ways to help meet those needs. Trust that if you do that well, the sale will be a natural by-product of the discussion. If you don't maintain that focus, even if you sell a service, you're likely to sell the wrong one and thus ultimately end up with an unhappy client.

Similarly, if you want your fiction to talk about issues that are important to you, the worst thing you can do is try to make the fiction be about those issues. Instead, tell great stories, the best you can possibly manage, as well as you can manage. Trust that your concerns will find their way into your prose.

Trust doesn't come easily to me, but I've learned that in the above cases and in many others, you often have to trust the winding, indirect trail will prove to be the best way to your goal.