Typical Writer Ramblings

Wow! Can't believe it's already been over a year since "To the Top of Greenfield Street" was published. I am humbled and flattered by its successes. Yet with every compliment comes the pressure of... where is the follow up?

And I gotta say, it's not that easy. Greenfield Street seemed to pour out of me. My debut had zero pressure, and zero expectations, but now, as I sit down and write, instead of writing for the fun of it, I keep thinking about the audience. What will they want? What do they like? Should I do a sequel? Prequel? Same setting? Some type of Greenfield universe? The whole thing has me in a slump.

Thinking too much.

Procrastinating.

Making excuses.

Quitting.

I believe this is called the sophomore slump. My novel is so, so, so, relatively insignificant, but I feel like I just won 20 Grammys on my first record, and now the label is asking for another...

So what do I do?

Forget it, man. Forget everything. Forget everybody. Forget Greenfield. Write for fun again. Write for you. But it's not that easy. I'm still blocked on what to write. Write what you know. Which is...

I don't know anything. That's why I wrote a coming of age novel. Everybody has a truth about growing up. I wrote mine.

Been there done that. Now what?

You don't know anything else? What about parenting? Or baseball. You love baseball.
But I don't know shit about it. Not enough for an entire book...

What happenes is this: I write and write and write.

Probably about 100 pages. Then I stop. Like a roadblock. A friggin' brick wall.
Why?
Because the story sucks.

At first, it's fun to have everything running around like crazy, and the characters are sprinting. I'm chasing them. They're writing the shit. And I'm listening. It's a real blast!
But then I get to the meat of the story. Where is the climax? How do I tie up all these loose ends? That's when I walk away. I second-guess.
There's no theme. There's no truth. The fabic is a jumbled mess.
Start over.
Do it again.
Read some old shit I abandoned. Try to fix it. No, that sucks too.
Why am I doing this? The hours wasted, weeks, months, years.
Stay positive.
Time isn't wasted. It's all you have. At least I'm doing something sort of constructive.
I'm practicing. Hoping. Searching. I keep going.

Another great story is just around the bend.