Norman Green

SLOW PROGRESS

When I finished writing my first book I immediately started working on the second one, and therefore, by the time my agent pronounced the first manuscript ‘finished’ and therefore marketable, I had a pretty good handle on what I wanted to do next. Just keep writing, I told myself, don’t stop whatever you do, just keep working.

That was roughly ten years ago.  A lot has changed in ten years, the world is a different place, the publishing industry is circling the drain, but I published six novels, and I am, I think, maybe one more draft away from being finished with number seven. I think I’m pretty happy with them all, even though I must admit that when I look at them now I see mostly what I would change.

I’ve changed as a writer, too.

While writing my first book I didn’t have a clue where I was going but brother, I was determined to get there. I tend to be much more deliberate these days, I spend a lot of time in between writing projects thinking about what I want to work on, and why. That is, in fact, what I’m doing now, and I gotta tell you, brother, I do not enjoy the process. In general I find the act of sitting down and writing something to be empowering (sorry, I know how overused that word is), particularly in first draft. To me, it feels like running does when you’re in a groove and you think you’ve got it all going. I used to be a runner but these days my knees doth protest too much, and loudly. But what I’m going through now feels like a trip to the grocery store when all your ideas lie there stinking like a row of dead fish and you think, man, I don’t wanna buy any of these things, get me outa here.

However.

I still choose to believe that the struggles I am currently not enjoying are worthwhile, that no matter how much I would love to skip this entire step and just jump into something new, I really need to sit here until until it feels right, until I have a vision of something that I think is going to be worth the year of my working life it will take to pull it down out of the air.  So, if the ‘what’ is still in question, at least the ‘why’ is becoming clearer.  I was not wrong, ten years ago, when I told myself to just keep working.  I might have told myself that out of fear, back then, but I know better now. I need to do this because it feels as good, when I get it right, as anything else I have done.

Call it a runner’s high.