Writing a novel these days feels like a relentless and slow grinding of gears

Been working on my novel-for-adults (provisionally entitled The Storytellers). I'm quite excited about the book. But it's also been slow. Te novel is very short, 30k words in its first draft and probably 45k in the final draft, and I've been writing and rewriting the first two (of six) chapters. I always spend a lot of time on the first act. To my mind,…