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.
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.
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.
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.