Blog 97 - Climbing Everest

Blog 97 - Climbing Everest

November 2025

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve come to realise that writing can be compared to climbing Everest.
No, seriously. Hear me out.
It all starts innocently enough, doesn't it? You get that initial spark, that thrilling idea. It's like seeing Everest from a distance – majestic, inspiring, and you think, "Yeah, I can totally do that! It looks amazing!"
That initial vision is a writer’s Base Camp. We are full of enthusiasm, convinced the mountain respects us, and completely unaware of the challenges ahead. And this is where the truth of the analogy really starts to take shape; before the actual ascent, you need to gather your gear. This isn't just about survival; it's about rituals. You need a trusty laptop (your high-tech oxygen monitor), a well-worn notebook (your map of potential escape routes), a pen that always works (a rare and powerful artifact), and enough coffee to fuel a small nation (your essential high-altitude stimulant).This is how we writer’s set up our base camp—our cozy writing nook, its perhaps a local coffee shop whose Wi-Fi is surprisingly reliable, or maybe the kitchen table, or in my case it’s a second hand computer in the back bedroom.
Then when you’ve got your outline (your climbing route), your character notes (your seasoned, often rebellious, expedition team), and a full tank of enthusiasm. You can take that first tentative step outside. The air is crisp with possibility. You feel incredibly optimistic. You check the weather forecast (read a few inspiring quotes on Twitter) and you begin the climb. You are fueled by the certainty that this draft will be different. This draft will be easy.
Spoiler alert: It won’t be.
To begin with the actual climb is an adventure. Each word, each sentence, each paragraph is another step up the mountain face. Some days, you’re making great progress. These are the idyllic days where the atmospheric pressure is perfect. You feel strong, hitting your stride. The words flow like a mountain stream (a bit of a cliché, but hey, we’re on Everest!). You hit your daily word count before lunch, feeling like Sir Edmund Hillary himself, conquering new heights with every chapter. You are convinced that you’ve finally mastered the craft. Your inner monologue is simply, "I am a genius. This is spectacular." And then you enter the Death Zone.
This is where you encounter the blizzards. The blinding, disorienting white-out conditions of writer’s block. You’re gasping for the oxygen mask of inspiration, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. You stare at the blinking cursor, that merciless little ice axe, demanding that you move forward when every fiber of your being wants to retreat. You stare at the same paragraph for an hour, convinced you’re stuck in an endless crevasse of your own making, repeating the same lines or deleting forty entirely sensible words in a fit of self-doubt. You know the feeling: that moment when the 100,000-word mountain suddenly seems to stretch into an impossible 10,000,000-word range. The "thin air" feeling of a blank page is real, folks. It’s a low-oxygen panic where your brain can only process fundamental survival needs: Must find plot point. Must not check Twitter. Must drink more coffee.
Then there’s the sheer exhaustion of it all. Sometimes, when you are 75% of the way through a chapter, feeling the burn of that high fictional altitude, you just want to lie down in the snow and take a very, very long nap. Or maybe just throw your laptop into the chasm and take up needlepoint. The mountain asks: Is this story really worth it? And you dare to whisper back: I hope so, because I forgot what flat ground looks like.
Just when you think you’ve made it through the hardest part—the grueling, soul-destroying first draft—you hit the Khumbu Icefall of editing. The Khumbu Icefall, for those unfamiliar with Himalayan geography, is notoriously treacherous: it’s a shifting, constantly moving glacier full of hidden crevasses and unstable ice towers (isn’t Google a wonderful thing?) Well, that’s exactly what Editing is.
This is where you discover all the hidden traps, the wobbly ice bridges, and the gaping plot holes that could genuinely swallow a yak. You thought that character motivation was solid? Nope. It’s a canyon. Did you accidentally change the protagonist’s eye colour in Chapter 4? Yes, you did. And now you have to re-evaluate your entire route. You have to chop away at unnecessary baggage—those darling paragraphs that were beautiful on their own but just don't work within the context of the greater expedition—and sometimes, you even have to turn back to a previous camp to rethink your strategy entirely. Rewriting is the literary equivalent of realizing you left an essential tin of beans back at Base Camp and the journey back is non-negotiable. It’s painful. It’s meticulous. And it is absolutely necessary if you want to survive.
This is when you realise that you cannot climb Everest alone. You need support. You need someone with better navigational skills and slightly less altitude-sickness to guide you through the treacherous terrain. This is where your trusty Sherpa-like beta readers and editors come in.
They are the ones pointing out the loose rocks, helping you stay on course when you’re utterly disoriented and convinced that your story makes perfect sense (which they are happy to point out, it doesn’t). They are your oxygen tanks, providing essential, life-saving perspective. They are the skilled guides who look at the landscape and say: “I see what you were trying to do here, but this entire section is leading you down a precarious route and off a ledge. We need to dismantle it and build a stronger path”. Even when they suggest you rewrite an entire section that took you three weeks to draft, it’s for your own good. Probably. (Deep breath. Hand me the ice axe. We must move forward.)
Then there is a moment, brief and utterly euphoric, when you finally hit the word count, or finish the final revision, or compile the manuscript one last, definite time. This is the summit. The view is unparalleled. You are temporarily immune to failure. You feel the satisfaction of having navigated the blizzards, avoided the crevasses, and survived the shifting icefalls. You have done the impossible. You have proven that the initial, optimistic fool that started this herculean task was actually right to think they could do it.
But just like the real Everest, the summit is not the end of the journey. That moment when the last word is typed, the final edit is done, and you hit "send" or "publish." That heralds the descent—the process of sending the manuscript off, submitting it, and if we are dreaming, we may as well dream big, publishing it— and the descent is often the most dangerous part. It involves waiting, anticipating feedback, and dealing with the sudden, terrifying silence after the climb. But hopefully, finally, after weeks, months, or even years of caffeine-fueled treks, self-doubt avalanches, and triumphant small victories, you are back at base camp. Your fingers might be a bit frostbitten from all that keyboard-climbing, but your heart is full and there is always another mountain to climb.
And if that’s not like climbing Everest, I don’t know what is!