We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Norris Comer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Norris below.
Hi Norris, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Interesting question! I’m not sure if I subscribe to the idea that we find a purpose.
One of Alan Watts’ talks comes to mind where he suggests life may be less like a journey and more like music playing. You can spend your whole life restlessly seeking some kind of finish line or prize, only to find that the whole thing was a song you were supposed to enjoy and perform in your own style. He might be onto something there.
I also think that finding some things, like life purpose, inevitably tries to reveal itself. The finding of purpose may be a lot like trying to get a newly met cat to like you. You don’t aggressively approach the cat for a pet, that usually drives it away. A better tactic is to be calm, maybe even a little coy, and ignore the cat. Paradoxically, this is what may provoke the cat to not only approach you, but insist upon a pet with an earnest meow.
I’m just thinking aloud here. To tie this into my schtick, I’m a 33-year-old working writer and about one year into being a published author. Unlike most of my professional writing peers, I did not have ambitions to be a working writer growing up. I majored in marine science with a geology focus, took a Gap Year, have worked seasonal gigs on a variety of commercial ships, and even competed on a Norwegian Reality TV show. It’s been a lot of dancing to the music of life versus a journey with a destination a la Watts. The cat of purpose has approached me of late with earnest meows. The wee beastie must’ve deemed me ready.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a working author and writer with a small company called Sabertooth Salmon LLC. I wear many hats to put bread on the table.
My book Salmon in the Seine: Alaskan Memories of Life, Death, & Everything In-Between was published last year by MilSpeak Books. The book is a memoir about my time after high school heading up to Alaska from the suburbs of Portland to try commercial fishing to fund my Gap Year before college. It’s been an amazing year and Salmon in the Seine has won eight notable indie awards at the time of this writing. I’ve crisscrossed the country to different book fairs, tours with fellow indie authors, etc. I am working on a few new books both similar to Salmon in the Seine and wildly different. Last weekend my book got on the shelves of Powell’s City of Books in Portland–my hometown–and I signed the copies. Unreal!
Most of what I do is write for magazines, mostly maritime industry and recreational boating related titles: Power & Motoryacht, Passagemaker, Pacific Yachting, Fishermen’s News, Pacific Maritime, SAIL, etc. I studied marine science in college and spent some time working as an oceanographer, mostly related to the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Looking back, I think hopping aboard boats for seasonal gigs was my version of running off to join the circus. But the sea salty beat is real, the demand is there and there’s not many players in the field.
I’m also the new editor of The Sea Chest magazine, the publication of the nonprofit Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society. I love this magazine, a passion product from the area’s sea salty community. We get to tell important cultural stories that nobody else does or can. In this era where everything is so trend- and profit-obsessed, it feels great to serve as a torch bearer for the human experience.
I’ve also been a senior copywriter with advertising juggernaut Wunderman Thompson for about two years. Before striking out on my own, I was the managing editor of a regional boating magazine for about four years. I have a new and growing Substack called Norris Note.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Hmmm!
I remember an interview a long time ago with novelist John Grisham. When he was asked when he knew he was a writer, he said that when he was a kid he always needed a lot of unstructured alone time. This time wasn’t even spent writing, he just liked wandering around in the local forest thinking. Looking back, I definitely relate to that. So a desire for a lot of unstructured alone time is quality number one.
Quality number two is that I actually enjoy the process. For me it’s writing, but you can probably apply this to most things from sports to academics. It’s not all about the “glory” of having a book out there. Just about everyone would push a button that would instantly make them a published author. Very few people actually enjoy the years leading up to it. But whether it’s nurture or nature, I happily type away solo. Often with a bit of sipping tequila.
Quality number three is probably a lot of respect and curiosity about the real world. How things actually work. The mechanisms of systems. I think a lot of creative types are also imaginative idealists, which is beautiful. But being willing to walk in the corporeal realm of blood and guts, capitalism, and how human beings actually tick is such a massive part of success. I matured out of the idea that the world is whatever I imagine it to be. The world is what it is, the carrots delicious and the sticks brutal. Embrace the duality of it, the Yin and the Yang.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I think that if you’re in the small press/indie author, small business owner, freelance creative space as I am, collaboration is the name of the game. I’m keen for a collaboration conversation–ideally over coffee or brews in-person–anytime and anywhere. I met my agent/publisher in college at a beer mixer. I’m The Sea Chest editor thanks to word of mouth. I could call and have a nice chat with most of the managing editors of magazines I write for. I’ve teamed up with other indie authors for panel pitches to bookstores that may not be interested in us if we were solo cold callers. Heck, I have friends from elementary school.
Bottom line, collaboration is life. And the vast majority of life is offline.
From my perch, I’d love to work with more visual and audio artists. The way things are, multimedia is king. We live in a world where if in addition to excellent writing you can produce amazing visuals and killer audio, you really can take on the big dogs of media and entertainment. A graphic novel edition of Salmon in the Seine would be INCREDIBLE. Also, I feel like cinema-styled video clips of scenes from the book would be popular online. Podcasts are killing it and I’ve been honored to be invited to be a on a few like Big Time Talker and Anything Bones. Writing, making multimedia projects as part of my creative SEAL team, and riffing off our work with a podcast would be amazing. And the costs of the tech and distribution (thanks to online platforms) is so low these days that the barrier to entry isn’t a dealbreaker.
Now is the time to build a small but elite in-house crew of multimedia creatives, think the early years of Lucas Film back in the 70s, to eat some big boy lunch. With the Hollywood strike and mainstream flops and general sense that American storytelling is in flux, whoever has a good bearing to true north they can sail on should go for it. Look at fantasy juggernaut Brandon Sanderson! He doesn’t come up very often, but he is probably the most prolific and profitable living fantasy author. He was wise enough to set up his own publication apparatus and is living the dream. I’m looking at guys like him, not the traditional industry playbook written in the 1990s.. “Chaos is a ladder,” said Little Finger in Game of Thrones. There may be something to that!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://norriscomer.wordpress.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/norriscomer/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/norrisnelsoncomer/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/norris-comer-246579121/
- Other: My weekly-ish Substack is Norris Note: https://norriscomer.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile
