the next great thing

A big name was talking to a group of authors this summer. He said that he had spent a lot of time thinking that whatever project he was working on was going to be "the next great thing." He thought that for years and years until he finally realized that there was never going to be the next great thing. There was only going to be projects that he either loved or didn't love, either was happy to have finished or not. And he had to decide whether to work on them based on that, and not on whether or not they were the next great thing.

It was one of those moments that has hung around in my head like a weight ever since then. I am always working on a project I am sure will be the next great thing, the book that will catapult me out of the mid-list author blues and into best-seller-dom, the book that will make me a ton of money and a household name, so that people don't look at me with heads tilted when I say I am a writer and ask, "Have you written anything I would have heard about?"

I think that in the back of my mind there is this hope that one day, I will be able to show everyone. You know who I mean. Those stupid kids in junior high who made fun of me for reading during recess. The guys I dated who never called back after I told them my dreams for the future. My professors in school and out, who thought analyzing other literature was fine, but trying to write it--not appropriate. My parents, who sort of wanted me to get a real job and most of the time tried not to come right out and say it like that. My in-laws who are convinced I could write a best selling novel if I just wanted to do it, because they don't look that hard, really. My kids, who would like to think of me as more than just the woman who goes to book signings when she should be driving them to lessons, then comes home depressed because she sold all of two books.

Most of the time, I tell myself that writing is worth it, all the angst, all the terror, the hard work, the being crazy with ideas all the time, because I'll have something to show for it. But a few times a year I look at the truth in the face, which is that I am a writer. I mean, I write. It's not glamorous, but it's the one thing I am confident that I do really well. I write because writing is part of the way I think and live and breathe. Maybe it is time for me to grow up and see that I don't write for other people. I write for me. And what matters is that I need to be proud of what I write, today and forever. It changes a lot of things, not just what I am writing, but how I feel while writing.

When I am out on a 50 miler, I tell myself all the time, just one more minute. Just one hundred more steps, and then you can stop if you need to. Just reassess in one hundred more steps. This is long after my dreams of getting a PR have faded, when I can't even see anyone else in the race, let alone imagine myself at the finish line. It's the moment when I know why I am out there. It's not because I have to be. No one cares if I finish, no one but me. I demand it of myself, I demand that intense focus and concentration and I demand the end result of doing my best, looking myself in the mirror the next day and knowing that I was tough enough to keep going.

That's what writing is, one long race, one hundred steps at a time where no one cares what happens but me. And that's what writing should probably always be.