Writing is hard these days. With Merm-8 being peer reviewed, and all my short stories completed, I don't have anything left to do but composition. And composition is hard.

It's made doubly hard by the fact that I don't really have anything to write about. Oh sure, there are ideas. Ideas that I've kept in the backburner for just such an occasion where I needed some short story ideas. But those ideas are old, and I'm not very interested in them. I'm not even sure if I was interested in them to begin with.

I've tried writing them, but my heart just isn't in it. Instead of looking forward to writing, I dread it as work. Maybe the idea isn't good enough for a short story, maybe I just don't like short stories. Maybe I'm a novel writer at heart, and that's what I should be doing. Maybe I should be working on a novel. Maybe I should be doing more outlining. Or maybe I should just stop writing altogether.

It's not like I've been terribly successful in writing lately. Black Hole Son has had 30 rejections. My stories aren't good enough for the big magazines, and I know it. And I know the things I'm writing now are nowhere near the quality I'm looking for. They're the same tripey dribble that I always make when I'm not interested in what I'm doing. And if I'm not interested in writing it, it's going to show. Why torture myself for something that's not fun.

Is this just a temporary lull, or am I getting sick of the writing? Am I in a rut I need to break out of or do I need to soldier through it?

Labels: , ,