About a week ago I was enjoying my regular run – or, at least, a version of it.  My regular run is between 8 and 10 km and the route I enjoy most is going up a winding, dirt track up Mt Coot-tha to the nearest television broadcast tower, and back down.  I usually get up at 4:30 in the morning to do my exercise so I can be done before the kids start to wake around 6, so any morning running at this time of the year is done before dawn and I wear a tiny headlamp if I’m doing the mountain track.  Now the pre-dawn run is thousands of footfalls in pitch black lit only by a bobbing headlight that sometimes becomes just a silver cone of foggy exhalations.   But a week ago, a Sunday, I was able to enjoy the run in full daylight and I had a perfectly clear vision of every rock, every patch of leaves, every runnel.   Around the halfway point, confident about seeing everything, I chose to look up from the immediate path ahead to check whether I could spot the road that goes up to the summit and down to the Botanical Gardens.  Sure enough, two hundred metres or so ahead, there it was.  But in this split-second glance up, my right foot landed on a patch of leaves disguising a rock and I sprained my ankle.

Not badly, thank goodness, but enough for me to call myself a colourful list of names reflecting my low opinion of the cocky decision to look up instead of watching where I was going.  I couldn’t believe it; I’d made this run so many times in almost no light without mishap; now, in daylight, I nearly lame myself.  Eejut.

Some time ago, I was invited by the lovely Ian Irvine to post on his blog, and I offered a small piece which equated writing to my daughter’s first tentative steps – that writing, like walking, is little more than controlled falling.  I still believe that, but this little episode on the bush track both reinforced that belief and took it a step further (woeful pun).

In writing, as in running on uncertain ground, it doesn’t always pay to look up from what you’re doing to try and spot the road ahead.  If you are making progress going step-by-step, for goodness’ sake keep going.  Don’t look up!  You can stop and check your bearings when you naturally run out of steam – which might be the end of the writing day, the end of a chapter, or (if the muse is kind) the end of the manuscript.  But don’t imperil yourself by making an unnecessary pitstop.  Some people like having a clear, paved path ahead; some people like running wildly between the trees – horses for courses (to meld analogies).  But even if you are tempted (maybe by fear, maybe by cockiness) to check the middle distance, have confidence to resist.  Have faith that the wave of inertia is taking you somewhere, and hopefully it is off the beaten track, because that’s what readers crave: the new, the fresh, the previously unseen.  And don’t be afraid: you should have at least an idea of the route you’re taking – of what the general direction of the story is.  Indeed, some of us like to map the route very precisely before we begin, and some of us enjoy adventuring into the pure unknown of story (I believe the singular Ray Bradbury worked in this fashion; I recommend highly his Zen in the Art of Writing).  The latter is the wildest adventure, but seems to me to pose serious risk of becoming lost, or at least banging into a tree, but it is I think the only way off the map into new territories, and I applaud those that do it and find their way back to civilisation.

Whatever your style is, I think that writing, and reading, too, should be done with gusto and impetus, appreciating the detail of what's immediately in front of you.  If you need to cheat and look too far ahead – as a writer or as a reader – you know the job’s not being done right.