This Much I Know Is True - An Interview With Gaz

Tonight’s interview is in a rather special location and has a rather special guest! As some/most of you know, I do a fair bit of indoor rock climbing with my husband. Recently husbando has been training for a trip to Spain under the auspices of a rather exciting climbing coach Gaz Parry.

Gaz has won the British Climbing Championships SIX times, he is on the British Climbing team and has climbed the world’s highest sea cliff! He is also a climbing coach, lecturer and currently resides in Spain with his girlfriend Kate where they run Epic Adventures – a climbing and Adventure Company.

During one of Gaz’s many trips back to the UK to route set* for various climbing walls, I was honoured to interview him at The Castle, an indoor climbing centre in North London. So, Gaz is eating a pot noodle and I am eating a piece of yummy chocolate tiffin and drinking a smoothie – we are also, briefly, joined by women’s climbing champion Leah Crane. I am, needless to say, a little star-struck by both. This interview is a little different and I hope you enjoy it….on with the show!
Me: Firstly, thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be interviewed. As with all the interviews, I always start with a tough question! Could you tell us what the best piece of advice you've received is?
GP: Hmmm that’s a tough question! Probably “don’t do as I do, do as I say" my dad circa mid 1980s!

Me: Hah, such a parental thing to say!! Can you tell us a bit about how you got into climbing?
GP: Well I was always quite sporty – played a bit of rugby – but I started climbing when I was12. I’d done a fair bit of walking and hiking with my dad so it just stemmed from there really. I never climbed with my dad mind it was with my mates from school.

Me: And, although you’re a professional climber/coach now, did you study/have a career before that?
GP: I left school when I was 17 - I just wasn’t in the right place to study at that point, I just wanted to have fun and climb. I went back to college when I was 26 to study Countryside Management – it covered stuff like lambing and building walls and also business theory. I really enjoyed the combination of learning and also getting my hands dirty as it were.

Then I worked as a sales rep for North Face - I enjoyed it, getting out and meeting people – although presenting to senior management at a major account can be a little nerve-wracking! The company went through a few changes – being bought out etc and I just decided one day to resign. My obsession with climbing was pretty much taking over my life anyway – I was doing a lot of competing!

Me: Tell us a little bit about competing and how you focus/prepare for them – was it harder when you were younger?
GP: Focus is a combination of the physical + mental. I don’t think about other people/competitors– it’s all about getting into the `zone` as you hear many athletes talking about. Getting into the `zone` is not something that can be taught, it is individual and takes discipline to learn to do it. When I was younger it didn’t come so easily but now I can slip into it without effort.

Also with climbing there are so many variables to take into account – you can be at your strongest but you also need to be able to problem solve + route read. For example in 2007 I was very strong + fit but just before the European Climbing Championships, all the skin fell off my hands The fresh new skin was impossible to climb with – and yet nothing I did could have prepared for that.

Me: That must have been frustrating. I’d love to know - does anything scare you at all – rock climbing can be seen as an extreme sport?
GP: Not inside on plastic but outside yes, of course - heights can be dangerous and scary it’s all about getting to be familiar with an alien environment, and learning to trust yourself and your rope work/safety skills and developing a mindset to go with that.

Having said that, on one occasion I was competing in a major championship and my head just completely went and it was very scary then. Had a total meltdown in terms of being in the zone and being focussed – having the mental strength to climb is important to combat the fear.

Confession Time

(Honesty noun - The quality of being Honest adj. - telling the truth or able to be trusted and not likely to steal, cheat or lie Etym. - From the Latin `honestestas` meaning honor, honest or virtue.)


The aim of Word of The Week (WoTW) is to make me bring the focus of this blog back to writing at least once a week - as that was one of the main reasons I started blogging. The idea is that I'll talk about a word but show how I think it relates to the craft of writing, if that makes any sense. (Although last week's WoTW was not focused on writing, the previous week it was.) This week's WoTW is Honesty.


Weirdly the inspiration for this WoTW struck when I was in a seminar this morning - don't ask me how i get involved in these things - on the topic of coaching. One of the thoughts I had about coaching was that it seemed to me all about someone encouraging you to be honest with yourself about yourself and what you want. Bingo - WoTW found - tick off the list for today!


It made me think about how as I, as a writer (and yes, I am finally counting myself as one, being honest here) should be more honest with myself about my writing and what I want from it. Sometimes it feels like  the advice I've read about writing and writers and literature isn't all that honest; it can seem a little prescriptive and conformative (sorry, not sure if that's even a word). 


For example i think the general external perception of writing is that one must always be working towards the greatest work of literature ever produced, that to want to be published is wrongetty wrong wrong, that you should be a slave to your art etc etc. Clearly, for most published authors this is not the case, but even within writing circles I feel like there is a little bit of snobbery over what constitutes an acceptable attitude towards one's own writing.


I would guess that the majority of writers out there (published or not) are working away in spare rooms, coffee shops, squeezing time to write around day jobs that pay the bills and partners and kids and well, real life. Some of us write on the bus, on the tube and the train. I am guessing I am not alone in having inspiration strike at massively inopportune moments - mainly during my working day - yet I do not have the liberty to drop everything and bash out a few 1000 words. Neither, should I add, that if writers block strikes, can I wander amongst the daffodils. I have to write when i have time, regardless of whether the words are there or not. Else it doesn't happen at all. It does sometimes make me question why I bother to write.


So I would like to be honest here and say the biggest secret I have been keeping about my writing is............I dream of being published, I do, really, perhaps that's not a huge surprise but I am ashamed of admitting that in public. So often I have seen it said that you should not write to be published etc - and I'm not writing to be published but equally, it is one of the goals I am working towards with my writing.


Linking into this, if I'm honest, the possibility (tiny though it may be) of being published is something that helps motivate and focus me, otherwise what am I doing all this for? Clearly being published is only one of the reasons I write - I love my book and I am in love with my characters (wld like to point out I don't think my book is amazing, but I love it anyway, like old slippers). My book is comforting, it is non judgemental, it demands nothing of me save what I chose to give it. And at this stage of my life, I am finding it very rewarding to write - the creativity it demands is really helping me be more productive and creative at work - weird huh. I guess it would surprise you all to think that I don't really consider myself a creative person.


So this post is dedicated to all the writers and authors out there, for when it's really getting tough and it's hard not to lose hope and what WTF are we really doing here.  Well take time to think about yourself and consider what do you really want from your writing? More importantly, are you getting it? If not, why not? After all, as every Jewish Princess know (moi included) if you don't ask you don't get. I hope that this post inspires maybe someone out there to think about what you want from your writing and take the first step to getting there. Isn't that a little bit exciting + empowering?


I really welcome your comments and thoughts on this - good or bad (can't promise I won't cry!). It interests me.


Thank you and good night.


Stupidgirl has left the building