Can I make it up the hill?
Why writing (and walking up steep hills) is an endurance sport, not a sprint
Almost as soon as I leave my front door, I am walking uphill. It’s a slow incline at first, digging gently into my shins as I push my body forward. As I reach the final row of Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses in this place I call home, the incline sharply increases, my heart starting to hammer indignantly as I reach a shaded footpath where the steepest section of the route lays waiting for me.
In reality, it’s a 3-4 minute walk at a relatively fast pace. It is the most direct route from our house into the village, unavoidable if I want to visit the local bakery, buy food supplies from the corner shop or the butcher, or am suddenly and inexplicably in need of a hammer, a plant pot or a last-minute birthday card from the local hardware shop.
The village lays beyond the hill, so the hill I must traverse, panting and puffing, stopping and starting, wondering why it doesn’t get any easier even though I’ve lived here for almost two years. It sounds awfully familiar to my writing process - attempting to haul oneself up a magnificent and important mountain in search of the answers to everything, only to realise that you’ve actually only made it up a reasonably sized hill with moderately important epiphanies, and that was enough of a struggle, actually.
Writing is always hard, and I am often impatient, momentarily forgetting that the joy of writing must be found in the process rather than the end result. I want to rush up the hill so I can emerge victorious at the top and proclaim that I did it, I made it, I am a writer who writes things. I want to bypass the uncomfortable bits, the failures, the moments where I wonder if I can actually do this thing that I have wanted to do since I was an eleven year old writing her dead guinea pig’s eulogy.
What if I slowed down? What if I sat in the discomfort? What if I took it one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, inching slowly but purposefully towards my destination? Navigating the difficult parts of the writing process is as physical an experience as it is a mental one, much like the way I feel halfway up that impossibly steep little pathway. When the word I am searching for eludes me and even Google doesn’t show up to rescue me, I can feel the frustration bubbling in my toes, my brain buzzing with the effort of trying and failing to summon the word from its box.
And yet, I resign myself to my fate on the steep hill most days, just like I open my laptop every morning and force myself to stare at a blank page, cursor blinking, until the right words come. I will never not write, and I will never not feel my heart banging and hollering in my chest, joyful to be alive, as I emerge into daylight at the top of the hill.
These are my truths, my reasons for being. I think perhaps I’ll take the hill a little more slowly next time.
Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed this, please feel free to leave me a comment below, it means soooooo much to me when I see that notification!
Lauren x
Love this so much and it very much resonates for me. Not a day goes by that I want to scream because it feels like everything I write is so bleh and I worry I’ll never write a good sentence again, and then when I finally do it’s like magic!
I love this analogy Lauren, and can completely relate. There's this frustrated itch I get when I can sense a good sentence on the tip of my tongue, but can't quite find the words, and it can never be forced! When the right words do come it's like magic, I get such a kick haha! I suppose when you're writing for yourself because it's what you love, you want to get over the hill and get the joy from it to show yourself that you're capable. I used to get the same thing with running, I'm so slow. But my trainer would always say a 5k is still 5k no matter how long it takes you, and the fulfilment is just the same. If we take time to enjoy the process of what we write, we'll feel extra proud of it because we know what it took to create.