Writing is a bitch and so is being driven.

Writing is difficult.  I don't need to tell you that.  If you've ever picked up a pen and tried to come up with something brilliant, you know what I mean.  Writing, in my case, is more like painting, so a lot of what I write doesn't go anywhere but the verbal colors are pretty and how they are constructed say something, like the totality of a picture, but novels aren't revealed in their entirey, they're revealed one page at a time, which can make my novels a challenge to get through, which is what I want, to challenge the reader, but few people like to be challenged, especially in literature because it is a time consuming process to make it through something that may or may not be worth the effort. 

I recently got a critique from a friend who read a novel of mine and had some very valid complaints.  She said that it was at times boring and didn't always go anywhere, and she's right, but my novels are a reflection of life, a literal interpretation.  Life often doesn't go anywhere.  From a small enough frame, the curve of life in which we go from birth to death or learn lessons, is a straight line where nothing is learned, just experienced.  Sometimes people, even over a long enough time frame, don't learn anything or don't do anything of consquence.  I realize that this doesn't always make for engrossing novels but those are the types of novels I write.  Maybe they'll go unread for eternity but that's what I like to write.  I had a crisis of faith this week, wondering if I should continue to write novels that people seem to admire me for finishing but not much else.  Should I focus my time and energy on something else that might be more productive, show more fruits for my labor.  I'm not sure what that means but I feel it. 

I've led a productive life compared to most people.  I've seen large parts of the world, have a college degree, I am in graduate school, I have close friends, a close family, and I've written books.  That's impressive yet I still feel the need to do more?  Why?  What is this drive?  I don't want to keep up with the Jones, that's stupid beyond words, I don't want large sums of money, I live comfortably on hardly anything, yet I'm always asking myself if I can do more.  Is this a cultural thing that was implanted in me without my knowledge, some sort of message that tells people that life is short so do as much as possible, experience everything now because later won't always be there?  Why am I driven and to what end?  Where or when does it stop?  When is good enough good enough? I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that question because the grass is always greener on the other side and the grass is green now--mostly:)