Into Thin Air, and on to the end
This past week, I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, an account of the spring 1996 Mount Everest climbing season, the deadliest in history. Krakauer was a member of the guided expedition which suffered the greatest number of fatalities, and he carefully reconstructs the series of events that led to the disaster. The book is gripping. I read it in just a few days, which is very quick for me, and was always reluctant to put it down. The writing is fantastic, the details are fascinating, and though I knew the outcome in advance, the story was highly suspenseful.
One of the main things I'm thinking after reading this book is that I'm really glad I don't have to climb Mount Everest. High altitude climbing sounds like an absolutely miserable experience. Even when everything goes well, a person summiting Everest can expect to endure serious physical pain and unpleasantness. I am pretty much the opposite of adventurous, so it's not as though going through an experience even remotely like an Everest climb would be a possibility for me.
Given my lack of adventure, gracelessness, and fear of heights, it may come as a surprise that I used to rock climb. In high school, I did rock climbing as a club sport to meet the athletic requirement for two autumns (I had "falls" there initially, but that was a bad ambiguity). And I liked it pretty well, though I guess not enough to do it again outside that context, except for maybe once or twice at a rock gym.
Most of the climbing we did in the club was at a big boulder that I'm pretty sure was less than two stories high. There were several different routes up the rock that we all climbed multiple times to learn and practice climbing and belaying techniques. None of it was very hard or very scary. At the end of the season, we made a couple of trips to a real cliff. I don't have a good recollection of how tall it was, but it was tall enough. I have a very clear memory of clinging to the rock partway up the face, unable to find any other hand or foot holds within reach, trapped in place by a fear of falling that wouldn't allow me to take a risk and trust the rope. I have no idea if it was one minute or ten that I remained frozen while the climbers on the ground and at the top yelled helpful suggestions, and I don't know how I managed to get moving again, but I did make it to the top of that cliff. It was one of the scariest and most difficult things I've ever done.
Writing a novel isn't anything like that. I have half formulated a hokey comparison between summiting Everest and finishing a novel, but I'll spare us all the indignity of setting that down in words. After reading Into Thin Air, I feel inspired to a certain extent to complete my own endeavor, but let's just say that it's only about the thrill of accomplishment, and not based on any further parallels.
I really want to get to the end of this novel, and soon. Not because I hate it and want to get it over with, but because I so strongly want all the events that are going to take place in the novel to happen. They're all there in my head, stacked up and waiting and jostling each other for my attention (hey, I didn't say there wouldn't be any hokiness at all in this post), but I have to go through the laborious process of writing each one down before I can get to the next. The slowness is immensely frustrating -- and not just for me, but also for the very patient readers experiencing the novel in serial form.
So I'm going to try to pick up the pace. If I can just hold myself to spending a little more time at my desk each day, being a bit more focused during that time, and attaining a slightly higher daily writing target, the words will accumulate faster. I'll knock off each of those much-anticipated plot events in a more timely fashion, and I'll reach the conclusion that much faster. It's going to take more effort than I've been expending so far, and I'm going to have to buckle down and really be committed to my goal, but I feel ready.
And if you read between the lines, that climbing metaphor is in there after all.
One of the main things I'm thinking after reading this book is that I'm really glad I don't have to climb Mount Everest. High altitude climbing sounds like an absolutely miserable experience. Even when everything goes well, a person summiting Everest can expect to endure serious physical pain and unpleasantness. I am pretty much the opposite of adventurous, so it's not as though going through an experience even remotely like an Everest climb would be a possibility for me.
Given my lack of adventure, gracelessness, and fear of heights, it may come as a surprise that I used to rock climb. In high school, I did rock climbing as a club sport to meet the athletic requirement for two autumns (I had "falls" there initially, but that was a bad ambiguity). And I liked it pretty well, though I guess not enough to do it again outside that context, except for maybe once or twice at a rock gym.
Most of the climbing we did in the club was at a big boulder that I'm pretty sure was less than two stories high. There were several different routes up the rock that we all climbed multiple times to learn and practice climbing and belaying techniques. None of it was very hard or very scary. At the end of the season, we made a couple of trips to a real cliff. I don't have a good recollection of how tall it was, but it was tall enough. I have a very clear memory of clinging to the rock partway up the face, unable to find any other hand or foot holds within reach, trapped in place by a fear of falling that wouldn't allow me to take a risk and trust the rope. I have no idea if it was one minute or ten that I remained frozen while the climbers on the ground and at the top yelled helpful suggestions, and I don't know how I managed to get moving again, but I did make it to the top of that cliff. It was one of the scariest and most difficult things I've ever done.
Writing a novel isn't anything like that. I have half formulated a hokey comparison between summiting Everest and finishing a novel, but I'll spare us all the indignity of setting that down in words. After reading Into Thin Air, I feel inspired to a certain extent to complete my own endeavor, but let's just say that it's only about the thrill of accomplishment, and not based on any further parallels.
I really want to get to the end of this novel, and soon. Not because I hate it and want to get it over with, but because I so strongly want all the events that are going to take place in the novel to happen. They're all there in my head, stacked up and waiting and jostling each other for my attention (hey, I didn't say there wouldn't be any hokiness at all in this post), but I have to go through the laborious process of writing each one down before I can get to the next. The slowness is immensely frustrating -- and not just for me, but also for the very patient readers experiencing the novel in serial form.
So I'm going to try to pick up the pace. If I can just hold myself to spending a little more time at my desk each day, being a bit more focused during that time, and attaining a slightly higher daily writing target, the words will accumulate faster. I'll knock off each of those much-anticipated plot events in a more timely fashion, and I'll reach the conclusion that much faster. It's going to take more effort than I've been expending so far, and I'm going to have to buckle down and really be committed to my goal, but I feel ready.
And if you read between the lines, that climbing metaphor is in there after all.