What I Talk About When I Talk About Juggling
By Kristan Hoffman | January 14, 2012 |
In third grade, they made us learn how to juggle. We started with scarves, because they have good hang time in the air, and they don’t make any noise if — okay, when — you drop them. So picture a room full of 8 and 9 year olds throwing these dingy, neon-colored squares of cloth all over the place. Worst PE class ever, right? I mean, what does juggling have to do with anything? Couldn’t we have climbed the monkey bars or played kickball instead?
Now that I’m an adult, I recognize that juggling is an everyday part of our lives. Figuratively, of course. But the principles of literal juggling still apply.
- Start with one scarf. Establish a rhythm. Let your hands get used to the motion, until you don’t even have to think about it anymore.
- Add additional scarves one at a time. The learning curve can be steep, and there’s no reason to go to the next level until you master the one you’re on.
- Go at your own pace. Like most things in life, juggling is not a race, so take your time to do things right and set yourself up for success.
- If you drop something, don’t panic. You can keep going and pick it up later, or you can pause to get it now. Either way, it’s not life or death.
- Keep your eyes on your own scarves. First, because juggling takes tremendous focus. And second, because the successes or failures of jugglers around you have no effect on your performance. Don’t be distracted by what they’re doing.
These are good guidelines to follow for most things in life. And you’re a smart crowd, so I know you can draw your own metaphors, but allow me to make one for you: writers are jugglers. We have to manage so many different elements within our stories — plot, character, setting, theme, dialogue, prose. Each one is a scarf that we must throw and catch, throw and catch, over and over again.
(Tip: Tackle one or two “scarves” per draft. You’re not going to spit out a perfect novel on the first try.)
And we don’t just juggle in our stories, either. Like it or not, we have to live in the real world sometimes, and that means balancing family, jobs, pets, friends, chores — not to mention our own physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Then there’s the blogosphere, with its emails, blogs, Twitter, Facebook… The juggling never ends!
(Tip: Figure out which “scarves” are the most important. Focus on keeping those in the air.)
For anyone who feels overwhelmed (as I often do) let me repeat: start slow and simple. Add carefully, and accept the fact that at some point, you’re going to drop something. If you need to stop following a few blogs, or skip vacuuming this week, that’s okay. No one — and I mean, no one — can juggle all the balls all the time.
Trust me, if you try to, you’ll just end up like little third grade me, sitting on the dirty PE room floor surrounded by colorful scarves and bawling her eyes out.
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Photo by Helico
Originally from Houston, TX, Kristan Hoffman studied creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and later attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Now she lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati, OH, where she writes both fiction and nonfiction with a focus on feminist, multicultural stories. Her words have appeared in the New York Times, Switchback, and the Citron Review, among others. She is currently at work on a Young Adult novel. For more, please visit her website.
Good post. Certainly the metaphorical uses of juggling are out there.
One of my favorite scenes in the excellent movie She’s All That is the one where Zach is more or less forced to go onstage at an improv theater. He has no idea what to do, but he has a hacky sack in his pocket, so he starts doing one of his routines, chanting ‘Don’t let it drop’ as he does. When it finally hits the floor, he says, ‘Eventually, it’s gotta drop.’ It was a brilliant bit of character development and foreshadowing, in addition to the actual point.
In the book D’Shai, Joel Rosenberg introduces a Sherlock Holmes-like hero, who started life as a juggler, and continues to use juggling as a stimulant to his thought processes. And let’s not forget Lord Valentine.
I tried to juggle for a while. I could do two balls but only managed to get 5 tosses with three before they all came down. I’m better with words.
As research for this post, I actually tried to juggle again. Let’s just say I’m not any better than I was at 8 yrs old. :P
Great post. I consider myself a pretty decent metaphorical juggler, though the true juggler in our family is my husband–scarves, balls, you name it. He’s a talent.
Tackle one or two “scarves” per draft. You’re not going to spit out a perfect novel on the first try.
Wise advice. Maybe my next story will be easier to write if I focus on this idea–and a few simple aspects of storytelling.
Thanks for the post, Kristan!
Wow, wonderful post and image. I especially like the line about keeping our eyes on our own scarves. It is so easy to mind other peoples’ business and neglect our own. And if we are constantly dropping the ball, we might be taking on too much.
I think your teacher was inspired to teach juggling.
Have a blessed day.
Heather
“…because the successes or failures of jugglers around you have no effect on your performance. Don’t be distracted by what they’re doing.”
This is key for me. I have a hard enough time doing my own juggling, but all too often I get caught up in what is going on with others, sometimes becoming distressed and envious. I feel like I’m being left behind, like my work is taking too long, like I should be farther along with my online presence. But you’re so right that it’s not a race, and that I need to focus on what I can control.
Thanks for a wonderful reminder, Kristan!
How apt. I love the idea of learning to juggle with scarves. Certainly you get to practice and your coordination develops. Also, despite one’s most angst-filled nightmares, like in most of life, and writing, nobody gets seriously hurt if and when you drop one. It’s inevitable. It’s part of the process. You just pick it up where you dropped it and start again.
Like Anne Lamott told her son when he was overwhelmed by the number of birds he had to cover in his elementary school report. “Just write it ‘bird by bird,’ ” she told him. Or, in this case, just juggle scarf by scarf. It’s a great image and good advice. Thanks, Kristan!
Great advice to start slow and simple Kristan.
The lessons here are easy to remember with your
use of great visuals. Your advice on revisions very helpful. I’m beginning to revise and will use your approach.
I’ve always seen juggling as a good analogy for writing–and so many other things. I started juggling when I was 12, and 30 years later it’s served me well. At work, and while writing, when things pile up, I’m usually calm because I remember working up to juggling 5 things, and how impossible it seemed. Later, once I got it down, what once seemed like a rush slowed down to the point I realized there was time in their for tricks.
The biggest writing lesson I’ve learned as a juggler is that to make it as a juggler, you have to stink as a juggler. A lot. You often drop more than you succeed when learning, but few things feel better than when you realize you can do more than you ever imagined and that it’s all due to accepting a lot of failure along the way.
Rejection happens, just like dropping; the important thing is to pick things back up and keep at it until it feels right.
And you bring up a great point, Kristan: there’s a point with juggling that it becomes impossible, and it’s best to accept that and focus on perfecting — and especially enjoying — what you can juggle. Thanks for writing this…I always love seeing what people think about juggling and writing.
Haha, I never anticipated an ACTUAL juggler to respond to this post! I love it.
“The biggest writing lesson I’ve learned as a juggler is that to make it as a juggler, you have to stink as a juggler.”
YES. So true. To get to Good, you generally have to go through miles of Bad first.
Great post. I love that you have compared writers to jugglers. In fact, I have thought about that many times. Lately, I been trying to figure out my important “scarves” but they all have such a profound impact on me and I want to balance them all.
This was a wonderful post. Great advice. :)
I especially have been doing the “let the house go unvacuumed” thing – oh lawd! No elves have come to do it for me, so I will have to learn to juggle my writing/online time with the need not to have dust bunnies chasing me down the hall with daggers, calling out, “We are taking over this little log house! Hawhahaha!”
Love this visual of the juggling writer!
Hi! Great piece of advice you have here. I definitely feel as if I’ve been juggling. I’ve been trying to do ‘one small chore per day’ to try and keep the house clean, but sometimes that ball does get dropped.
I think it’s important that we focus on one ball at a time, until we can juggle more, but even when we can… we shouldn’t overwhelm ourselves. That gets stressful, and we start to lose enjoyment in what we love to do. I think every writer should learn to take a breather every once in a while. Couldn’t hurt… at least on special occasions. I’ll admit, that’s a lesson I’m still trying to learn myself.
Thanks again for the great post!
Savanna
“I think it’s important that we focus on one ball at a time, until we can juggle more, but even when we can… we shouldn’t overwhelm ourselves. That gets stressful, and we start to lose enjoyment in what we love to do.”
Yep! Sometimes just b/c you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD. A great additional point!
Juggling is not a race!!! Perfect. Succinct, direct and pertinent! I love it! c
I really like the idea of going through a draft focusing on one element at a time. I can see so much benefit to doing that. Unfortunately, I hate editing so much that I can’t bear the thought of actually going into editing knowing that I’ll be looking through my MS five or six (or who knows how many) times. I prefer to live in a world of delusion where I think I can get it all edited in one or two passes.
Lol. You would.
I will confess, sometimes in my first drafts, I tell myself, “This is so good, you’ll barely have any revisions!” But deep down in the back of my mind, I know it’s likely not true. I just need to say it so that I don’t feel overwhelmed.
Great post and metaphor!
“No one — and I mean, no one — can juggle all the balls all the time.”
This is so true.
Great metaphor, Kristan. My daughter learned to juggle with plastic grocery bags. It makes sense to begin with one, easily-conquered thing before progressing. Too bad I forget this on a daily basis. ;)
Excellent blog. I don’t usually get distracted from my writing, but I tend to feel guilty if I take time off to do “fun” things. I have to remember that my family is one of those most important scarves, along with the writing. Thanks for your insights.
“The successes or failures of jugglers around you have no effect on your performance. Don’t be distracted by what they’re doing.”
Boy, I can relate to that! It is so hard not compare ourselves to others.
(Tip: Tackle one or two “scarves” per draft. You’re not going to spit out a perfect novel on the first try.)
Good advice and we can’t be reminded of it too much! I sometimes feel like I’ll never get finished with my current project, but I tell myself the old adage, “It’s like walking up a mountain, it just takes one step at a time.”
Love that advice to add scarves in subsequent drafts. Nice post, Kristan.
Beautiful post Kristan and excellent advice.
Plus when I don’t vacuum this week I will be emailing this link to my husband to explain ;-)
Lol. Well seeing as my meeting him is highly unlikely, I suppose that’s acceptable.
A meltdown can occur if you take on too much, but it can also occur if the wind changes and your scarves get blown about. Sometimes circumstances have more to do with sitting on the gymnasium floor, bawling your eyes out, than straightforward over-commitment. But then, perhaps one ought to have thought of closing the gymnasium door …! Thanks for a memorable image!
Oh sure, lots of things are outside of our control. I think that’s all the more reason to be calm and confident about the things that ARE. It’s a lot easier to stabilize 3-4 “scarves” in a huge gust of wind, as opposed to 10-12.
Great post. I love the analogy.
Blessings.
Kristan,
Great post and I love the analogy. For some reason, every time someone mentions juggling, my mind automatically goes to the notorious Monty Python “cat juggling” skit, a very sick, but funny sketch. The stakes were a lot higher than juggling scarves. As fiction writers we not only juggle story, theme, characters, setting, etc., but also that tricky balance between our writer and personal responsibilities. Someimes, it’s more like juggling eggs.
Interesting post, Kristan. And I have to agree with Vaughn. “..you’re so right that it’s not a race, and that I need to focus on what I can control.” Sometimes I get so frustrated, knowing I can’t control who likes and/or buys my book. It’s definitely something I cannot control. I can only do what I can do and go forward to write the best book I can.
Patti
Great analogy, and great perspective–love it! Thanks for sharing, and happy weekend.
I particularly like your suggestion to “keep your eyes on your own scarves.” They are the only scarves we can have a useful effect on and quite enough responsibility!
I love this metaphor, and since I’m in the middle of a particularly trying bit of juggling right now (i.e. revising a manuscript I’m not at all feeling confident about), I like the reminder to focus on one scarf, maybe two, until I feel like I’ve mastered it. It’s easy to feel like writing IS a race, and like another commenter said, it’s easy to have at least half an eye on the scarves of others, which seem to be floating a little bit higher or faster or whatever.
Thanks, Kristan, for this terrific post!
:) Elissa
Thanks for the comments, everybody! I’m so glad this resonated with folks. :)
I read an interview with Penn Gillette once and he said he started as a juggler before he became a magician, and whenever he learns anything new, he applies lessons he learned from learning to juggle.
He said there’s a particular way jugglers learn things, where you learn things gradually, incrementally, slowly, and patiently (those are my adjectives, not his — I’m trying to recapture his message). He said he can always tell people who have been jugglers by the way they learn things.
Great post, Kristan.
I especially like your tip on tackling two scarves per draft. I am notorious for juggling too many things at once, but will keep this in mind next time I sit down and try to untangle the mess of scarves wadded up around me.
[…] of the nuances of my juggling analogy that I didn’t really explain is the cyclical nature of it. We tend to juggle the same items […]