Having Trouble Writing

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.” — Joseph Heller

You know the last time I updated this thing?

Yeah, a long time ago. I’ve certainly thought about it, to be sure. You never really forget a project you start writing, whether it’s a blog, a book, or anything else for that matter. It’s impossible to really forget about the unfinished stories or “the ones that got away.” I’ve got finished stories that I haven’t looked at in years; once they were done and saved, I haven’t looked them in months or even years.

But this blog? Those unfinished novels? The shorts I’m working on now? They crawl into your head, settle down at the base of your skull and start to dig. And they dig. And they dig. Either you purge yourself of them, or you commit yourself to a very, very long future of realizing that you might overlook them from time to time, but you’ll never really forget about them.

So what else? I’m not that much of an e-book author these days: all of the ideas and dreams about an independent future have withered and died on the hillside, for better or worse. Finding representation hasn’t been much better, either. I’m among those countless thousands  or millions of  the “unpublished author” — nobody gives a damn about us, and we keep playing the Agent Lottery and keep striking out.

Can I be annoyed at the proclivity of romance and urban fantasy I see being published these days? Some of these people couldn’t write a fortune cookie’s worth of interesting content, but it’s what’s selling, so they get to feel accomplished and the rest of us linger in Querying Hell.

I’m still writing. I’m still hoping. I’m still despairing.

And the world keeps on spinnin’.