Going through some papers the other day, I came across an envelope. Probably tax returns from ten years ago, I thought, but when I opened it, out fell a treasure trove of documents. There were junior school reports (embarrassing), a couple of handwritten stories (very embarrassing, but important, we’ll come back to those) and some certificates. The oldest of these was my first swimming certificate – one length of my school’s pool – dated February 1975. I’d just turned eight. 

Even at the time we knew how incredibly lucky we were to have a school pool. Yes, it was cold and the showers were antiquated and it would probably fail every modern Health & Safety check (that verruca footbath!). But it was ours and, even better, it was on school grounds, so we could swim every week. Pretty soon I managed five lengths, then ten, then twenty-five. I’ve been swimming ever since; it’s something I love to do, and while my breaststroke is pretty good, my front crawl is terrible. I’ve always been envious of those who could effortlessly cut through the water without exhausting themselves. So, last year, hoping to improve, I found a tutor and had a lesson, and I discovered what I was doing wrong.

Everything.

Honestly, apart from getting in the water, there was no single thing I didn’t need to improve: the angle of my head, shoulder rotation, diaphragmatic breathing. Don’t get me started on Barbie hands and Popeye mouth (yes, they’re both things). Once I’d got my breath back, I was amazed – I’d been doing this since I was a kid; how could I be getting it so wrong? But my tutor soon put me straight: my swimming style needed improvement because it had been unchecked for all those years. He gave me some drills, and encouraged me to focus on just one element of my stroke at a time, and slowly, after many, many more hours in the pool, it began to come together.  

Now, as I practise my catch and pull, finish and recovery, and seek to replace decades of muscle memory with new technique, my mind frequently strays to writing – what I’m working on and how it’s going. 

I’ve been writing for even longer than I’ve been swimming, and it’s always been a part of my working life – from websites to feasibility studies, and from speeches to thought leadership articles. In April 2020 I finally undertook the three-month creative writing course I’d had my eye on. Little did I know that it would begin a couple of weeks into the first national lockdown in living memory. But that turned out to be a blessing. The enforced time at home presented my coursemates and me with a wonderful opportunity to get to know and learn from one another and from our brilliant tutor, Catherine Johnson. We had the space to really lean into the crafting of fiction. And I learned that – despite writing for work and being a voracious reader of contemporary fiction – my creative writing contained countless long-imprinted and oft repeated errors.

As a kid I was fascinated by the quote: don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass. (Apparently, Chekhov never actually said that, but it’s far more quotable than what he actually wrote to his brother.) So, the importance of showing not telling was always there, but as I looked back on things I’d written – from those junior school stories (told you) to my first fiction writing exercises – my newly critical eyes spotted countless bad habits. I’d assumed that a solid grasp of grammar and punctuation would see me through, but I was so wrong. Passive verbs crept in; speech tags extravagantly avoided the use of a simple ‘said’; filters stood between my characters and whatever they were experiencing. Sure, the endless edits weeded those tenacious buggers out like the thistles in my tiny lawn, but as I put in the (thousands of) hours, and my craft improved, they became less frequent. And now, the more I write, the fewer things there are hiding like traps between me and the stories I’m trying to tell.

Incremental improvement demands focus and dedication. And it’s twice as important when it comes to activities we’ve been undertaking for many years, because one can’t simply tweak the incumbent paradigm. We must become aware of our unchecked mistakes, and actively deconstruct those practices. Only then can we begin to rebuild and improve, to put in the hours of repetition, establishing the foundations for new skills, and slowly building expertise. 

I know this process of learning and improvement will continue for as long as I’m writing. And that makes me very happy. Craft books and writing courses can turn the dial, but for me the most transformative experiences have always been a product of community. My original writing coursemates – The Dead Pets Society – have been collaborative and inspirational in their help and support. More importantly, they’ve become friends. And the same is true here at WriteMentor, where hundreds of people generously share their knowledge, experience and time. The conferences, conversations, beta and critique partners and the rigour of daily sprints have a profound and daily effect, and my week is often set on the right course by these Final Words. (Meta, right!?)

Now, some days I swim and most days I write. When I’m doing one, my subconscious is often processing the other – breaking down bad habits and applying what I’ve learned: more rotation here, another centimetre of extension there; tighter structure, more active prose. I’m currently writing novel number four while trying to ignore the fact I’m somehow on submission. There’s no guarantee an editor will see promise in my work, but if they do, my debut novel might one day be in a young reader’s hands. That prospect fills me with indescribable excitement; maybe even as much as that first swimming certificate did fifty years ago.