It seems like a lot of people I know are going through a tough writing spell.  Maybe the planets are out of alignment or the increased sunspot activity is sapping creative forces (if you believe such things).  I must confess that my writing the past few months has been dragging along with more resistance than normal.  It’s not that I lack ideas; it’s more like the stories just don’t want flow out, so I’m forced to drag them out kicking and screaming.  This is a tedious process, and it increases the likelihood that I’ll walk away from the story.  I’ve noticed an increased number of story fragments in the last three months, and this doesn’t sit well with me—fragments represent wasted time unless they lead to a finished story.

Good thing I have a backlog of story drafts to work on.  The last six weeks I’ve focused on revising these while plodding through a few hundred words a day of new writing.  I don’t like having a bunch of stories sitting around in draft form—finish what you start and submit it!—so this has been good opportunity to polish them up and get them out the door.  I’m starting to get low on first drafts, however, so I hope the planets realign soon.