This is the third of a short series on lessons learnt from climbing and how they relate to writing. Click on these links for the introduction and a look at progress.
When the climbing wall has put up new problems, there’s a temptation to jump straight on them. But I try to be sensible. I’ll do a few easier climbs to warm up. After sitting in my car for an hour I need to stretch a bit. I need to get my fingers used to gripping holds again, my body used to twisting at strange angles.
I probably don’t warm up enough. Others spend time stretching on the mats, or have a quick session in the gym. At least I do something, though. And then I try those new routes.
But, over the last year, my attitude in those warm-up climbs has changed. I’ve been working on ‘deliberate practice’.
What do I mean by that?
Climbing easy routes doesn’t take much thinking about. I get on the wall, and I climb. The moves aren’t taxing, so I can climb fast.
But that’s not the best use of my time. It’s better if I climb with deliberation. With each move, I try to focus on what my body is doing. When I go for the next hold, I try to grasp it so that I don’t need to adjust my hand later. When I place my foot on a hold, I concentrate on its position, on the angle of my ankle, on how I’m using the rubber on my climbing shoe most effectively on any sloping edge. And as I move I think about my body position, concentrating on how this is helping me. Rather than stretching my arm for the next hold, can I twist my body to provide better reach? On overhangs, rather than relying on upper body strength, can I alter my body position and footing to provide better support?
Warming up this way, I get the same physical warm-up, but I also improve my mental game.
Sometimes I’ll take this further. I’ll stay on the ‘easier’ routes for longer, intentionally focusing on my technique. I might not get any new, harder problems ticked off during that session, but I’ll be in a stronger position to do so later.
Another part of this (and one that I know I need to improve on) is training away from the wall. This could involve using a gym (or gym equipment at home). It could also involve stretching and working on flexibility. I’ve never been particularly flexible, and as I get older this is deteriorating. So it makes sense to practice—to run through stretching and flexibility exercises at home.
So what does deliberate practice look like in writing?
There’s a saying that if you write 1000 words a day, you’ll have written a novel over a year. There’s this idea that every word written has to count towards that goal, that any words ‘thrown out’ are wasted.
But this isn’t (necessarily) true. 1000 words a day might give you a novel’s worth of words over a year, but it won’t necessarily be a good novel, or even a coherent story. Those words will need editing, will need wrangling into a structure, will need massaging to bring out emotion.
Writing, like any activity, improves with practice. Yes, writing story after story, novel after novel, will lead to improvement. But what about training? What about writing that isn’t directly towards the current work-in-progress?
One of the podcasts I regularly listen to, Writing Excuses, always gives homework at the end. Although I rarely do the tasks, thinking about them helps. They might suggest writing the same scene from three different points of view, or trying to write a description without using adjectives, or write a chase scene using only dialogue.
I’ve written short stories that have stemmed from this kind of deliberate practice. Actually, short stories (and flash fiction—stories under 1000 words) are ideal for this. I wrote a hundred shorts between 2015 and 2020(ish), and I believe this exercise helped improve my writing immensely. I forced myself to work on new techniques, and getting every story under my self-imposed word-count helped develop my editing skills.
Deliberate practice in writing also involves reading with intent. If I read a book that doesn’t grab me, I’ll take a step back and attempt to figure out why. Similarly, with a book that grabs me, I’ll want to know how the writer pulled that off. I might stop reading for a moment, maybe go back a few pages, and analyse what’s happening.
Then there is training. I’m better at this in writing than in climbing. I’ll read books on the craft of writing, on marketing and advertising, on mindset. I’ll listen to podcasts (and try to glean as much as I can from them). I’ve taken courses in the past. I subscribe to various newsletters (although they do tend to get buried in all the other emails, so I don’t pay as much attention to them as I should).
Deliberate practice might lay the groundwork for progress, but that groundwork has to be built upon. And that’s where pushing forward comes in.
Currently, at the climbing wall I use, I’m concentrating on the ‘purple’ routes. I’m getting to the stage where I regularly manage about half of the purples, and I’m hoping to improve on that over the rest of the year.
There’s a part of my mind that likes things tidy. It’s the way I’m wired. I like to have one thing completed before moving on to the next. So, there’s a part of me that says, “Get the purples under your belt, and then you can move on to the yellows.”
This also involves insecurity. If I can’t complete the purples, then I’m clearly not good enough to climb yellows.
Which isn’t necessarily true. Climbers come in all body shapes and sizes. Different climbers have different strengths. There might be a yellow route that plays to my strengths—just as there will be purples that rely on techniques I can’t manage yet. Some purples I flash (succeed on the first attempt), but some ‘easier’ routes (reds and blacks) give me problems, resulting in many attempts.
And even if the yellows are ‘too hard for me’, that doesn’t mean I can’t try them. Maybe I’ll only manage a few moves (or even struggle to get off the ground), but by pushing myself I’m improving.
Which is why I’ll give them a go. I might not expect much, but sometimes I’m surprised. A few weeks ago I managed to reach the top of a yellow.
That doesn’t mean I can climb yellows—I’m sure it was easy for the grade, and I caught it in that perfect zone between warming up and feeling too tired. But it encourages me to keep trying.
Because we don’t get anywhere without trying, without pushing ourselves.
And the same goes for writing.
Again, I’ve used short stories for this—trying new ideas, experimenting with different styles. Some of these attempts work out better than others, but even the failures teach me something.
I want to improve as a writer, and that means pushing myself. I’m doing that with this space-opera series. It’s big, and maybe I’m taking on too much. I get the impression it’s going to take far longer than I anticipated—but that’s okay. I’ve pushed myself, and I’ve learnt. With what I’ve learnt, I can adjust my expectations while still pushing.
But what does ‘pushing’ mean in writing? Does it mean using a larger vocabulary, or writing increasingly complex stories, or using intricate prose with long, run-on sentences? Maybe, but writing like that asks a lot of the reader. I want my books first and foremost to be enjoyable. I want them to provide an entertaining escape. I don’t want to force a reader to struggle through dense writing.
No, I’m pushing to have a stronger emotional pull in the writing. I’m pushing to use words more effectively. I’m pushing to create believable worlds and relatable characters. I’m pushing to have my stories immerse the reader.
Which is tough. And if I keep practising (deliberately) I might get there. But I’ll get there sooner if I balance the deliberate practice with some pushing.
And this is my final thought on this area—progress requires both steady, deliberate practice and hard pushing. It requires moments of deep reflection and times of wild experimentation. It requires work on technique as well as periods of flow and abandonment.
As with so much in life, progress is about balance. If I don’t deliberately focus on technique, when I push myself I’ll readily slip back into old, predictable habits. And without pushing to try harder things, that deliberate practice will be nothing but a kind of meditation—enjoyable for itself, but ultimately serving no purpose.
In my last post, I described progress as a series of steps rather than a smooth incline. The push and pull of deliberate practice and pushing hard are yet another aspect of this.
But it’s different for everyone. And problems are not always what they seem to be. Next time, I’ll tell you how I’ve come to understand this about climbing, and how that relates to my writing.
This post is the latest in a series I’m running on Substack, chronicling my work on this new project. If you’d like to read these posts as they appear, please consider subscribing for free.
TW Iain 