Original collage by Helen Sword
Years ago, when I stepped into a university leadership role, a wise colleague gave me some advice.
“Every day,” he told me, “people will walk into your office with monkeys on their back, and they'll want to hand their monkeys over to you. Your job is to help those people as much as you can – but make sure they leave your office with those monkeys still firmly on their own backs rather than on yours.”
These days, most of my monkeys are of my own making: writing projects to push along, YouTube videos to script and film, online workshops and Stylish Writing Intensives to run for other over-committed writers (like you?)
The 800 pound gorilla that had been crushing all the other monkeys on my back until recently – a major book manuscript – has wandered off into the jungle now, though it’s bound to come lumbering back from time to time to be stroked and fed. Meanwhile, the smaller monkeys keep chattering away. In fact, I suspect that they're breeding back there. Every time I shuffle one monkey off my back, it seems that two or three more arrive to take its place.
What writing monkeys are clinging to your back, and how can you carry them more gracefully?
The first step is to acknowledge your monkeys, give them nicknames, maybe even dress them up in a comical clothes. I learned this trick from Mark Bryan and Julia Cameron's wonderful book The Artist's Way at Work, which contains an exercise called “The Forest Environment”:
Describe your business environment. What kind of forest is it? A jungle? A maple forest? . . . . Name the dangerous predators in your forest. Give them animal identities. Any bullying grizzly bears? Cunning sidewinders? Wily faxes? Deadly scorpions? Which are you? . . . . Name and describe the beautiful elements of your forest. Any waterfalls, meadows, bushes heavy with berries?
The next step is to teach your monkeys to ride lightly. Have you ever carried a toddler in a baby backpack? If yes, you’ll know that children feel much lighter when they’re wide awake, sitting up tall and shifting their weight to match yours; only when they start squirming or fall asleep do they throw you off balance. It's exactly the same with monkeys. You want them to ride lightly on your back, not to distract you with their antics or hang there like a dead weight.
Monkeys need lots of exercise; they’ll whine and wiggle unless you give them a regular chance to romp. Try freewriting in a notebook about how all those writing tasks are coming along, or talk about them with a friend over coffee. Monkeys thrive on fresh air.
Monkeys also need plenty of rest – and so do you. Do you have a secure play area where you can leave your monkeys while you’re exercising, relaxing, sleeping? You don’t need to carry them on your back all the time – that’s no good for you and no good for your monkeys!
Writing a weekly newsletter for thousands of subscribers sometimes feels like quite a heavy monkey to carry around. But it helps for me to picture myself as a leaping leopard or a jaunty parrot parading through the jungle with a well-fed, curious monkey on my back rather than a grumpy, screeching one.
Isn’t the human imagination a wonderful thing?
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