Getting good at being bad at things
How getting comfortable with failure is essential for writing
About this time last year, my partner took up bouldering. We had enjoyed watching the climbing during the Paris Olympics, and it seemed the perfect way to start being more active.
I'm terrified of heights and so I didn't want to join in, but agreed to trying it several months later, over his birthday weekend. To my surprise, I really enjoyed it, and for a while I went climbing about twice a week.
Bouldering problems
At first I was unable to make even the first move on all but the easiest routes. But after several weeks I triumphantly completed my first overhang project. I enjoyed the new trust I had in my arms and hands, and my own strength.
There's something oddly comforting about knowing you can reliably haul your own body weight up a wall. I was pleased with my progress and the confidence boost that came with it.
Climbing is a fickle sport though, and I soon hit some of the obstacles that every climber faces. My progress stalled and for a long time I wasn't able to complete anything new.
My fear of heights kicked back in, making me afraid to attempt routes that I had sailed up in previous weeks. Somehow I couldn't believe that my arms were strong enough to support me safely, when they felt numb and noodly.
The occasional beta spraying (climbing slang for mansplaining) got me down. My confidence deflated and soon I was going climbing less and less.
These are common challenges in climbing, and they still affect climbers with much greater skill and experience than me. Climbing is a sport that necessitates slow progress. You have to wait for your body, right down to your finger tendons, to strengthen. This cannot be hastened without risking injury.
Hitting a plateau for a while is something everyone faces from time to time. You just have to accept it and keep climbing, trusting that small steps will add up to a bigger change over time.
The sport also requires you to suspend your risk aversion and survival drive, to an extent. Sometimes in order to complete a difficult move, you just have to go for it. If you launch yourself towards the next hold with anything less than full commitment, you will fail. Even when your brain is telling you that you can't possibly do it, you have to be bloody-minded in telling your body to go for it.
And of course, there are never any guarantees. Learning how to fall safely is part of being a good climber, but it is absolutely terrifying.
What has climbing got to do with writing?
The fact is, it wasn't fun to climb when it wasn't easy. Writing can be like that too.
This week, I shared an extract from my novel with a close friend, and they told me lots of things that they liked about it. I asked them a couple of questions to see if they'd confirm my suspicions.
Was my protagonist unsentimental enough? Was the pacing off? Was that sentence still clunky, even after countless rewrites?
They conceded that my fears were true, but they still really liked the premise and could see the progress I'd made on that section.
Cue an evening of the blues. Even though I already knew that section wasn't working as it should, and I'd even goaded my friend into giving me their honest feedback, and they had still been very kind about it, it put me in a bad mood.
"I'll just have to give up on this book!" I cried aloud.
Perry humoured me a little but then went back to studying for a Microsoft certification.
"I'll never be a novelist! I should stick to poetry! But even my poems are bad!" Etcetera, etcetera.
One small obstacle was enough to make me start questioning everything I'd ever written and might ever write. I did quite want to throw my novel in the bin for a bit, but luckily didn't act on it. Just one difficult chapter had me chalking up the whole project, and my whole practice, as a total failure.
I know writers are supposedly prone to drama (and let's be honest, there's no smoke without fire when it comes to this particular stereotype) but even at the time, there was a part of me that could see how ridiculous I was being.
One difficult route, one crisis in confidence, does not make you a failure, whether you're climbing a wall or writing a book.
Getting back on the wall
My friends wanted to go climbing, and at our climbing gym have to have a 'competent climber' to supervise you. I'm not sure I'd describe myself that way, but I still count, because I have been trained in the basic rules of how not to die while climbing.
I didn't really feel like going climbing, but I didn't want to let my friends down, so I went.
It was brilliant. Because there was a group of us, I didn't get as much individual time on the wall as usual, and I admit that most of my time there was spent in the cafe. But somehow going there with other people, just for fun, and with low expectations of myself did the trick. I got back on the wall.
The same is true for my novel. I had a night off, and then I went back and looked at the chapter.
The scene wasn't working because I was still writing a kind of shorthand version of the book. I've heard novelist Elle Nash refer to this as scaffolding,1 and I like that metaphor -- I had the shape of it, but hadn't filled in the detail yet.
So I went back to basics. In every writing workshop I've ever been to, we've talked about grounding the scene (or sentence or poem, or whatever unit you want to work in) in the senses, so that's where I started. What did it sound, smell, taste, feel like?
From there, a little more dialogue occurred naturally, and this had the effect of making the dynamic between the two characters clearer. Voila.
I'm not saying I'm magically ok with failure now, but these two recent experiences did make me realise I needed to stop whingeing and get on with it. Like finger strength, writing progress also can't be rushed. You have to actually write the book in order to learn the lessons you'll get from writing it. There's no way around it but through.
And some moves you just have to go for. I'm taking some big technical swings in my novel. It's unlike anything I've written before. My friend could tell that I've been holding back and they were absolutely right. The chances of failing might actually be less if I just go there.
So, what's next? Well, I'm still rewriting in three-chapter chunks, trying to make it make sense. In the meantime, I'm going climbing again this weekend. I'm going to get my arse up that wall and if I fall off… well, then I fall off. At least I tried.
I'll lick my wounds, have a sulk, and get back to basics.
How about you? Have you found any techniques to help you bounce back from a confidence knock?
See you on the wall,
Flo
In her very helpful Knife Party editing course.