Focus on the throw

My son is learning to juggle at the moment. I’ve always felt that circus was his calling and it’s such a thrill to watch him apply himself to something that he really loves to do. It’s even more exciting because he’s combining several things that he loves in one act; the boy they call Hatter is now juggling hats alongside the balls!

But what’s this got to do with writing?

Last week, I was listening to the teacher help him to get more confident. ‘Focus on the throw, not the catch,’ she said, the theory being that if you’re too intent on catching, you forget to liberate the next ball from the hand and find yourself stuck, as he was, in a three-ball cycle. Once he turned his attention to the throw, he was, almost instantly, able to make 4 and then 5 throws rather than 3. I’m looking forward to seeing him progress even further in his class tomorrow night.

So, the writing parallel?

In Monday Motivation this morning, one of the writers was talking about putting their writing out there. She’d just received an email saying that she’d won a competition that she’d forgotten she’d entered. She was alarmed that she’d forgotten entering a contest that will lead to her being published by Bloodaxe (a very reputable poetry publisher) but I see this as a positive. Sending her writing out has become so normal to her that she’s not waiting on responses, she’s simply doing the writing equivalent of continuing to throw the balls up in the air.

My manuscript is currently out on submission. I’ve received three rejections so far and nine agents still have my work in their Inbox or on their desk or uploaded to their Kindle. It’s hard to keep writing while I wait for their responses. I realise I haven’t written much or sent much out since I queried those agents and, in truth, I’m a little bit anxious and almost paralysed while I wait. I am focused on the catch and not the throw. If we only send out one thing, we can agonise as we wait for the response. The rejection is also so much harder than if we have multiple pieces out there.

As my son grows in confidence, he’s dropping balls all over the place but he no longer notices them. He picks them up and carries on. There’s a lesson for us in that. Rejection and failure are a massive part of the writing life and we need to be comfortable with them in order to succeed. Focusing on the throw is one way to do this. Keep writing and keep putting things out there and, one day, things will fall into place. We can’t control where they land, only the direction that we send them in.

It’s a metaphor I’m going to use myself as I get back to putting words on the page and sending pieces out into the world.