They’re slipping from my fingers. Plots, characters, dainty ideas and robust ones. Try as I may, I fear that I cannot hold onto them, or bend them to my will.

As The Continent is still in its planning phases, I decided to work on some short stories and maybe some flash fiction (stories under 1000 words). But as I put my pen to paper, I have nothing.

Could it be that I’m just out of practice? Despite writing daily for over a year (not to mention those years through high school and early college), I haven’t composed much in terms of completed stories, only the novel and three quarters of a rather blah fan fic. I need practice with pulling together a tight story. Why does my Muse abandon me like this?

On the plus side, I’ve decided to do “research”, otherwise known as reading a whole lot, and hoping that some good comes of it. There’s no one quite like Ray Bradbury when it comes to short stories.