My first published climbing article was in 1983. It appeared in ‘Mountain’ – the foremost climbing magazine in the world. Despite it being well received, I hadn’t any confidence at all. It was six years later before I tentatively sent another article to another climbing magazine. It too was accepted.
T.I.M. Lewis (sadly departed). Gill Kent. You never forget the first people who published you, the first to believe in you. I’ll never forget them.
Throughout the 1990s, I wrote many dozens of articles for pretty much all the major climbing magazines. Every article was as good I could possibly manage. I’ve always loved climbing, and I wanted to give the very best of myself to climbing writing.
In the 2000s, the world changed; nearly all the climbing magazines went out of business. Online brusquely took over. It wasn’t considered a respectable medium for ‘serious’ climbing writers.
I’ve always loathed snobbery. Although I love beautifully produced books and magazines, I was also happy to write online. An advantage is that you can interact with your readers in a way which you simply can’t otherwise. And I love interacting with readers.
The themes of my climbing writing are classic: relationships, danger, death, grief, joy… But the writing is for a specialist audience; so, it may not mean that much to non-climbers.
With that caveat in mind, if you’re at all interested, just Google “Mick Ward UKC” or “Mick Ward climbing” or “Mick Ward climbing writing” and you’ll find tons of the stuff.
We Irish… we’ve got a fondness for words – and that’s for sure.