Over the last few years, as I’ve worked on improving both my climbing and my writing, I’ve seen many similarities between these activities. I’ve detailed my thoughts on this over the last few posts, but here’s a quick recap.

• Progress isn’t linear. There are jumps alternating with plateaus of consolidation, dotted with the occasional dip. But over time, progress happens.
• Sometimes things don’t work out, for reasons we can’t (yet) understand. Accept this and carry on.
• Deliberate, focused practice is important.
• Alongside deliberate practice there should be times of pushing forward and trying things beyond our current abilities.
• Everyone is different. What works for me won’t necessarily work for you. While learning from others is important, we must each find our own way.
• The problem might not be the problem. When stuck, the solution might lay be uncovered in what came before.
• Knowing isn’t the same as doing (which is why practice and perseverance are so important)
• Muscle memory is useful, but remember that practice makes permanent, not necessarily perfect.

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To bring this short series to a close, I want to consider a question. Why? Why do I climb, and why do I write?

The knee-jerk response is to say that I enjoy both activities. Fair enough, but I enjoy listening to music, and I don’t put in anywhere near the same effort in this as I do in climbing and writing.

So let’s go deeper. I became serious about my writing ten years ago. Why then? What caused this mind-shift?

At that time, I was struggling at work. I won’t go into details, but I felt like I had no control over the situation, and no clear way forward.

This was when I started writing more regularly. I had no big plan. I started from the kernel of an idea, and wrote to see what would happen.

My writing was something I could control. True, I didn’t know where the story was going. But there wasn’t anyone else dictating what happened. Ultimately, I was the one who decided.

Some years later I had a short novella included in an anthology called The Power Of Words, and I realised that this power lies not only in the words themselves but also in bringing them forth. Writing gave me something I lacked in my job. It gave me a voice, even if this writing was, at that point, only for myself.

I’d written before, but it reached somewhere deeper in me now. I continued, eventually finishing and then independently publishing novels.

And realised that writing was only a part of what being a writer was all about. Now that I had these books I needed to market them.

Okay, I didn’t need to. I could have put them up on Amazon and left everything to chance. But I thought it would be good to get something back from them‌—‌readers, and also money. At least enough to pay for the production.

So I set about learning marketing. I learnt about newsletters and websites, about reader magnets. I learnt about advertising and reader funnels, social media and reader tropes. And a whole lot more. I tried different tactics to help readers find and buy my books.

And while I have sold a few copies, and have had some positive reviews and ratings, none of my books have yet earned out. So far, this writing and publishing thing has cost more than it’s brought in.

Why? I don’t know. I try things. I follow what others have done. I try to analyse where things are failing.

And one thing I’ve come to realise is that there are no guarantees. I could do exactly the same as some successful writer, and I’d have wildly different results.

Because it’s not something I can control. Yes, I can tweak ads, or focus on targeting. Yes, I can write posts and newsletters. But when it comes to potential readers connecting with the ads, posts or newsletters, there is too much outside my control. There are a million other distractions. And if a potential reader does pay attention, are they in the frame of mind to buy, or to download a free book? If they download a book, will it become just another file, pushed down the TBR list in favour of a new, more exciting-sounding title?

I can control my input into marketing, but I can’t control what happens after that. I’m at the whims of reader attention, of various store and social media site algorithms.

Which could explain why I grew more serious about climbing over the last few years. With a vague despondency over the lack of marketing success, I needed a feeling of control. While the writing served this to a point, it was always tinged with the marketing side of things.

In most sports, you compete against others, either individually or as part of a team. There is a winner, and by default there are losers (those who didn’t win). But climbing is different. Yes, there are climbing competitions (even at the level I climb), but the competition is far more internal.

I think I’ve mentioned the friendly, co-operative atmosphere I’ve found at climbing walls. Whatever level you climb at, there will be someone to offer advice and encouragement. As a regular at the walls I climb at, I’m often there with other regulars, and we often work on a problem together. We’ll bounce ideas around, each trying something slightly different.

Usually, someone will reach the top first. But that doesn’t mean they’ve ‘won’, because the rest of us might reach the top using a slightly different set of moves. And even if you don’t reach the top, you’ve made progress.

And that progress isn’t down to others. Okay, there’s the advice. And the encouragement. But you take that in, and you let that feed into your efforts. Then, when the set of moves works out and you reach the top, you can justifiably say that you’ve done it.

And if you don’t? It’s not a case of someone else beating you to it, or someone else interfering (unless they do, in which case they’ll get thrown out). No, it’s simply that you’re not quite ready to solve that particular problem. Keep working at it, and maybe you will.

It comes back to control. Top out or not, it’s down to me. My climbing is under my control.

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I’ve come to realise that having at least one activity like this‌—‌something controllable‌—‌is vitally important. We exist in societies, where we have to fit in with others. Our actions are so often dictated or influenced by others, even people we don’t know. We can control how we respond to situations (to an extent), but we can’t control those situations. So having some time each week when we are autonomous can give a respite from this.

It’s what I get from both writing (storytelling) and climbing. I get to be in control of things for a while. Yes, I get enjoyment from both activities (and there’s physical wellbeing connected with climbing, barring any injuries), but they both help remind me that effort can bring rewards. It might not feel like that at times‌—‌for instance, when another set of ads falls flat. But that’s because I haven’t found the right approach yet. It’s like the ‘everyone climbs differently’ thing‌—‌what works for one person won’t necessarily work for me.

So I have to keep on. To climb higher grades I need to work on technique and push myself. To write better books I need to work on craft. To sell more books I need to persevere with marketing, taking in more advice and lessons and trying different approaches until I find what works for me.

And maybe that is another lesson from climbing I can bring to writing. Everything else can be seen as tactics, or ways to improve, but behind it all is perseverance.

The final, and most important, lesson‌—‌don’t give up.

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And that’s it for what climbing has taught me about writing. This series originally appeared on my free Substack‌—‌click here to subscribe. If you’re interested in the previous posts, after a short introduction I go into details on progress, my thoughts on practice, how individuality plays a role, and how knowing and doing are not the same.

This is the fifth of a short series on lessons learnt from climbing and how they relate to writing. Click on these links for the introduction, a look at progress, my thoughts on practice, and how individuality plays a role.

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I sometimes wonder if my body and mind are operating in totally different spheres. Too often, I understand how to do something, and know in my mind exactly what I need to do, but my body simply doesn’t get the message.

This always leads to frustration when trying to master new techniques. I’ve mentioned heel-hooks before, that I could understand how to do the technique, but couldn’t convince my body to put this into practice. And I’ve mentioned learning to roll a kayak in a previous post. Again, I knew what I needed to do, but I couldn’t do it.

There’s a vast expanse between knowing and doing. Some of this is down to physical limitations. I know I need to put my weight over a high foot position, but I don’t have the flexibility to place my foot properly in the first place, and don’t have the movement in my hips to get over the placement. Or I understand how to use opposing pulls to keep myself on the wall, but don’t have the strength to support my weight properly.

There is a way to overcome these limitations, and that’s training. I can improve my flexibility through targeted stretching. I can improve strength through exercise. Yes, there are limits (I’m not getting any younger, and there are physical laws to contend with), but I can push closer to those limits.

This training is also mental. It sometimes feels like there are barriers to break down, barriers that are keeping me from performing actions I know I can do. It’s too easy to fall back into old habits, despite telling myself I need to stop. As I’ve said before, climbing is as much a mental activity as it is physical.

There are parallels in writing. I know I use certain words too much, but they still spew onto the page. I know I don’t need to spell out what my characters are feeling (because it’s better to show the effect of their emotions), but when I come to edit I spend far too long removing these redundancies.

But there are ways through. I did learn to roll a kayak. I’m confident with heel-hooks now. And while those writing problems still occur, I’m quicker to spot them when editing.

So, how did I bridge this gap between knowing and doing?

Practice. Focused practice alongside repetition.

This builds muscle memory, and I see examples of this pretty much every time I have a good session at the climbing wall.

If I’m on a hard route, I won’t reach the top on my first attempt. I might initially struggle to get off the ground. But I persevere. I try different moves, and eventually find what works for me. Then the next move stumps me for a while, and I go through the same trial-and-error routine until I find the technique that suits my way of climbing. And so on, move by move. After a few weeks I might even reach the top.

But here’s the thing‌—‌those bottom moves get easier. The holds don’t change, but I know what to do, and my body has adapted to this. Often, on a particularly tricky climb, by the time I’m working on upper moves I can speed over the lower ones. Through repetition my body has learnt exactly what to do, and I climb efficiently. Where those lower moves used to drain my energy, now I can breeze through them, leaving me with sufficient energy to tackle the higher moves.

Muscle memory. It works.

But there can be an issue here.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’. It’s a lie. Practice makes permanent, not perfect. Practice a wrong move over and over, and it becomes ingrained (permanent). And maybe it works in the short term. But the technique is off, and the now muscle-memory-locked move can cause issues elsewhere. And to correct this less-than-perfect technique will require far more work than developing the correct technique in the first place. Correcting means unlearning then relearning.

Let’s give an example from writing. Like many writers, I use a keyboard. I did write my first ever attempt at a novel long-hand, but my physical writing too readily becomes a scrawl I struggle to read. I’ve tried dictation, but I think in words rather than sounds. I don’t want to have loads of physical paper around the place. I appreciate how easy it is to manipulate text files‌—‌copying them to ensure I have back-ups, as well as the advantages text files bring in editing.

Being the age I am, my schoolwork was all written by hand. I can’t recall ever seeing a computer at school. I had a Sinclair Spectrum at home‌—‌connect it to the TV, use a tape deck to load and save programs, and work with a massive 48K of memory! Oh, and type on squishy, small keys. Fast typing wasn’t a thing on the Spectrum.

When I did start using ‘proper’ computers, I didn’t have any kind of keyboard training. I found my way around the keys, progressing from a two-finger ‘look and stab’ approach, slowly using more fingers. Then, when I became serious about writing, I realised I needed to be more efficient.

I got some typing tutor software. I made a concerted effort to use the correct finger for each key.

But I’d already developed other habits. I could type ‘correctly’ if I concentrated, but it was usually slower than if I fell into a kind of mish-mash of self-taught and ‘proper’ typing.

I knew that ‘proper’ typing, if I could master it, would improve my typing speed. I also knew it would take a lot of work. Was it worth the effort?

Maybe. But how fast did I need to type? Yes, sometimes when writing the words flow. But often, I’ll tear through a sentence or two, then need to think about what comes next. Writing is as much about thinking as it is about getting words on the page. And my hybrid style was fast enough for my way of writing. Forcing myself to touch-type all the time would slow me down in the short term, and while it might make me faster over short bursts eventually, I didn’t think it would improve my overall writing speed.

So I’ve muscle-memoried my way into somewhere between permanent and perfect. It’s good enough for me. It’s fast enough to get my ideas out without too much delay. It’s full of quirks (I only tend to use the ‘shift’ key with the little finger on my left hand, very rarely with my right), but I do use all my fingers, and I use those bumps on the ‘f’ and ‘j’ keys to orientate my hands. I can type without looking at the keyboard, and fairly often without looking at the screen either.

It works for me.

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Which, now I think about it, comes back to the individuality thing I mentioned last time. Everyone is different. There is no ‘right’ way of doing something.

But it’s worth trying to do things ‘correctly’. While I’ve accepted my particular take on typing, I’m still working on those too-common words. I’m still absorbing all I can on the craft of writing, focusing on new techniques and ideas. Slowly, I’m translating that knowledge into practice, and I know that my first drafts now are far superior to the drafts I started with on earlier books. Similarly, in climbing, I’ve incorporated techniques I’ve struggled with, and this combined with improvements in my ability to read routes means I’m able to flash problems that would have stumped me a couple of years ago.

It’s a slow process, though. And I’m fine with that. The improvements week-on-week might be so small I can barely see them (and I might have weeks when, for whatever reasons, I ‘slip back’), but on a longer time-frame I’m making progress. I’m taking in knowledge, and with focused practice I’m putting that knowledge into effect.

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This brings us to the end of these lessons from climbing and how they relate to writing. Next time, I’ll sum up and take a quick look at why‌—‌why I climb, and why I write.

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This post is the latest in a series I’m running on Substack. If you’d like to read these posts as they appear, please consider subscribing for free.