Gregg Norman's Blog

If i see one more Facebook ad for a 'how to' book on writing novels, I gonna hurl. I know there are some valuable books on the topic written by accomplished authors in years past and I've read some of them with good results. But here I'm talking about those "How to write a novel in 90 days and sell 10,000 copies in a month" kind of books, the ones that are invariably less than 100 pages long and written by a twenty-something who no one has ever heard of. We all know the odds stacked against a debut novel. I'd be willing to bet that the crappy how-to books sell as well as, probably better than, most first novels, especially the independently published ones. That makes me sad.

Stephen Kings says writer's notebooks are the best way to immortalize bad ideas. He says a good idea is one that sticks around.

I admire his talent and his apparent ability to keep a lot in his head, but I respectfully disagree. I for one would be lost without notebooks in which I write character sketches, freefall passages, snippets of dialogue, descriptions of places, ideas (good and bad) and so many other things that I don't want to lose track of.

Do I use all of it? No, but I use a lot of it to good effect.

I've finally figured out why Moses spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness after he received the Ten Commandments. He was looking for a publisher.

I'm a big fan of the writings of western Canadian literary icon, W. O. Mitchell. He pioneered (and as a writer I practise) the "freefall" method of creative writing, a spontaneous jotting down of sensory and autobiographical fragments that can later be used when writng the draft of a longer work, resisting the urge to edit what is being written until the words are later re-written and put into use.

I write in cursive, with a cramped hand and a fountain pen. I am in that sense, among others, a technosaur (can't type worth a damn anyway). I find that writing by hand makes me more careful and deliberate, more thoughtful about my words. I realize I can more easily corrrect and edit on a computer screen, but I can also, possibly because of that fact, more easliy make mistakes.

I'm well beyond what should be the halfway point in a novella I'm currently working on. My characters have developed to a stage where they have their own voices and no longer always need me to put words in their mouths. I like this, especially when they are willing to talk, but sometimes they go silent and I have to wait - that's the part I don't like. I've just got to be patient until they're ready to speak.

I've heard folks suggest that the combination of this brutally cold winter and the never-ending COVID protocols should be good for writers (as in, 'there's nowhere to go and nothing else to do so you have lots of time to write'). Sad to say it ain't necessarily so. The prolonged cold temperatures and the fear of getting sick are depressing. No one writes well when they are depressed. On the brighter side, Spring is coming . . . it is coming, right?

Existential angst is a waste of time for writers. Just get on with it. Appreciate the fact that you've got the best job in the world. If you truly feel stuck, write just one sentence. Then write another and another. That's how it's done. This isn't rocket science.