What Snowboarding Taught Me About Writing Pt. 2

Hi fiction lover! I talked last week about what snowboarding taught me about writing. Mostly, I mentioned the persistence needed—the art of never giving up. But this week, I have even more to share. This will be the last installment (at least until I possibly go snowboarding again next winter). Here is what snowboarding taught me about writing pt. 2!

I mentioned how my dad was the one to teach me. In fact, he was the very reason I was willing to try again, after my traumatic falls on the ice. He walked with me from our accommodation as we carried our boards and gear, helped me with the ticketing, and talked me through the basics while we trekked through the snow toward the beginner slopes. He gave me a load of reassurance—not that snowboarding suddenly seemed easy, but possible to master for the first time. It was definitely a rough first few hours, as he guided me down and almost fell with me multiple times while I held onto his arms. But he constantly encouraged me. He praised every little step I made, and showed an epic amount of patience. 

I want to talk about the importance of mentorship in your writing. I once thought that writing was a solitary endeavor. That’s until I applied to mentorship programs such as Pitch Wars. I eventually got into a program called Author Mentor Match. There, I met my amazing mentor who guided me through a heavy manuscript revision. Of course, I thought that book was the one. It turned out that I would land my agent with a book later down the road, however. Still, the mentorship taught me so much, and I joined the other mentees of AMM, as we journeyed together toward publication. I remember our constant cheering for each other. We celebrated every win. We shared resources and even became critique partners. My mentor taught me that I need to take one step at a time, and not to be discouraged when facing rejection. Rejection felt like falling on the slopes, but it was a definite necessity to grow as a writer. 

There was one day in Whistler, the last time I was meant to go snowboarding, where I woke up and was absolutely not feeling it. Anxiety rushed through me, and the prospect of going up on the hill again was terrifying. I thought about quitting right then and there. But in an act of fate, my dad already bought my ticket for the gondola. So I forced myself out of bed, and I ended up really enjoying that last day, even though my limbs were stiff from the other days. 

In our writing lives, we’ll come across times like these too. We have days where we don’t want to put a single word down on the page. It’s fine to take breaks, but it becomes dangerous when we skip so many days that we find a distance between us and our stories. I encourage you to write consistently, even if it’s just for a small block of time per day. 

I have writing days where all I want to do is go back to my bed, or if I’m at a cafe, lean on the table and take a good nap. However, once I start putting words on the page, inspiration usually strikes and I’m motivated to keep going—to keep fleshing out the story. I find that the first ten minutes or so are the hardest. Once I move past that point, it becomes easier and easier, until I don’t even want to stop writing by the time the cafe closes. 

I’m sure there are many other life lessons we can learn from snowboarding. But these two—the importance of mentorship and consistently showing up—are the ones that I took with me after my trip to Whistler. And I still enjoyed my days walking around the village and keeping it lowkey. But my hours on the slopes were the highlights of my time there. And the next time I start a new writing project, I’ll remember everything I learned from all of my slipping and tumbling. Thank you so much for supporting fictiondipity and my blog, particularly my spiel about what snowboarding taught me about writing pt. 2.