Juggling words
Posted in Juggling on December 23rd, 2008 by luke – Comments Off
It has taken me many years to develop my current attitude toward writing.
As I look back over the landscape of my memory, there is a clear topography to my past. The early days of taking a profound and simple pleasure in the written word slope gradually upward, through the years of my education, into the plain of academia.
Across the long plateau of scholarly study, I see my perspectives and attitudes develop, shifting from visceral enjoyment to intellectual appreciation. During my tenure in college, my study of English literature provided the bedrock for the development of an informed and critical eye and mind.
Yet like the geography of our world, my literary landscape has continued its tectonic shift with each layer and component of my understanding interacting in a sort of clumsy, gradual ballet. And just as time–the unrelenting drudgery of each passing day–erodes and reveals new facets of the earth, sparks orogeny, and thrusts new peaks into being, so too has that inescapable force wrought great and sweeping changes in my thinking.
Like the steady drum of rain or the constant shifting of the substrata, the daily practice of writing has rendered a profound effect on my conceptualization of the written word. There is perhaps no adage more trite than “practice makes perfect,” but my personal realization of this truth has had a momentous impact on my life.
A strange convalescence of forces led to this revelation–led me to realize that, through practice and focus, the scope of our understanding and the depth of our ability are expanded.
When I began working for The Press-Sentinel, I began writing more voluminously and more fastidiously than ever before. The constant demands of deadlines and assignments drew a constant stream of composition through me. Stack after stack of copy grew before my eyes as I wrote day in, day out for this publication.
At essentially the same time, I became more fully engrossed than ever before in a seemingly unrelated personal endeavor: to juggle five objects.
Looking back, I can’t say which task seemed more overwhelming at the time.
Writing a half-dozen stories fit to be printed seemed as impossible as cleanly releasing five balls in less than two seconds. And at first, I handled both tasks with the same sort of panicked disorganization. Yet as time progressed, I began to see infinitesimal improvements.
At the paper, certain stories began to flow smoothly from my fingertips. Leads became clearer and cleaner in my mind. As I juggled at home, the breakdowns in my pattern came later and later. The path of each ball seemed sharp and almost tangible in my mind’s eye.
And the more progress I made, the more strangely related writing and juggling seemed to become.
At the pinnacle of my progress, I came to a sudden and shocking realization. Nearly everything I’d thought about both writing and juggling was fundamentally askew.
It was as if I’d stepped off a cliff and plummeted into a new and astonishing reality.
In all of my previous thought I’d considered the task of writing to be a sort of piecemeal process. Each research paper, feature story or foray into fiction could be broken down into component parts, the details polished to perfection and assembled. To some extent, I feel there is still some validity to this thinking, for, in good writing, every detail must be perfect and polished–every word exact and deliberate.
And yet, this line of thinking so fundamentally misses the heart of writing it seems shocking that I could have seen what success I have had under its influence.
It was juggling which led to my disillusionment. For in juggling, like writing, every detail must be perfect; every throw and every catch must be executed with absolute precision and forethought. With the slightest miscalculation, the slightest divergence, the entire pattern devolves into chaos.
For months I fought the forces of physics, straining against gravity and momentum to send each element into place. For months I failed.
Suddenly, I had a flash of realization. For any juggler to see some modicum of success with higher numbers, the details of throws and catches must be second nature. They must be absolutely subordinate to the purity and perfection of the pattern.
In that moment I realized my limitations. What my writing needed was not more well-polished parts. It needed a stronger, more immediate sense of narrative truth–an absolute image of perfection alive and vibrant in my mind.
To manifest that shimmering and ephemeral image, to make real the fleeting threads of thought within one’s mind, is what every juggler and every writer strives to accomplish. To do this, they must practice.
They must practice diligence, focus and humility. They must look, without ego, for weakness, for self-indulgence, for divergence. They must practice with a full knowledge of past successes and triumphs and without concern for them. They must practice daily and never stop.
I stand now, as both juggler and writer, on a new and uncertain terrain. I see the past with the analytical clarity of a cartographer. I see the present and future, looming and inscrutable.
And yet, I know with absolute certainty that one step, one toss, one catch, one word at a time, it will be revealed.