I once asked a mountaineer if climbing a mountain was difficult. He said both yes and no. To climb a mountain, you only need to put one foot in front of the other and do that over and over again. Maybe a million times or more and that’s easy. What’s hard is to do that all day and sometimes, all night. To do that when you’re exhausted and you just want to sleep; to do that when your leg muscles are aching and your feet hurt; to do that when the wind and snow pound at your face and you dream of being home in your warm bed; to do that when the air gets thin and your lungs long for more oxygen. That’s when it gets hard but it’s still just about one foot in front of the next.
The reward is the exhilarating view from the top. There’s a feeling deep within your soul that you did this incredible thing. Then the hard work of putting one foot in front of the other to make the long climb down. Many mountaineers die not from attempting the climb but on the down climb: having the weather turn, losing energy or getting lost. After explaining this to me, the mountaineer did wonder why he was drawn to do such a thing that is both easy and very, very hard.
Writing a novel can feel like a similar experience.
It’s really just about putting one word after another on paper. Should not be tricky at all. You don’t even have to do it a million times, maybe only 80,000 times. But there are some nights when I get home and I know I should write for a hour but I would rather curl up in my chair and read someone’s else book; or walk the dogs or even sit on the deck, watching the stars emerge. Maybe with a glass of red wine. That sounds quite nice.
The hard work of writing a novel is doing it day after day and week after week (or maybe year after year in my case). And when you reach that huge expanse at the peak–your novel is done, the words are on the paper–and you can lean back and enjoy the view for a moment. But then comes the long slog downwards; the editing process. How many first draft of books do you have tucked away but never completed because that down climb is too daunting? I have a few of those in boxes, thinking that one day I may get back to them; but then again, maybe that’s too much work. I’m sure that like mountaineers, many books perish in the down climb of the editing process.
Some days I wonder why I bother. After all, there are lots of good books out there so it’s not as if there’s a shortage of reading material. Definitely can’t be the money (or lack of it). Like mountaineers, who climb mountains because it is there, I suppose I do it because the story is there inside me.
Now excuse me, I have a novel writing mountain to go climb.
