A Fraction of a Pinch of a Part of a Hint of a Taste of . . . Writer's Block

I'm having a tough time with my writing right now.  I haven't written much since the middle of October.  When I wrote "Keep Thinking, Keep Moving" I did it in one night.  It turned out alright, too.  I was fairly happy with it and, as I wrote in a previous post, I have gotten a decent response to it.  The problem with writing something that quickly is that I start expecting to continue in that fashion.  Unfortunately, that doesn't happen.  My experience with "Keep Thinking, Keep Moving" was highly atypical in that way.

I think that one reason I'm having trouble with my other stories is that I don't know my characters well enough.  I can't write them as naturally as I would like.  Their dialogue and reactions to certain situations aren't obvious to me like Stooke's were in "Keep Thinking, Keep Moving."  

I was wondering why I knew Stooke so well and am having trouble with other characters.  Eventually I realized that 1) Stooke is based on a real person and the story is based on a real incident, therefore 2) I've really been working on that story for about seven years.  It was ready.  That could be problematic.  If a 1000 word story takes seven years I'm not going to be very productive.  There is hope, however.  Stooke's character, while based on a real person, is not identical to that person.  He changed while I was writing the story.  I've also written other stories in one large chunk; stories that didn't involve characters I knew before.  So that's encouraging.

Another factor that has worked against me lately is the Flash Fiction contest.  I'm still waiting on the results, and I've allowed myself to become sort of paralyzed in the mean time.  I just need to forget about he contest until the results are released and focus on writing.  I think, now that we're nine days into November, I'm ready to do so.  Hopefully I'll be able to come on here and report on new stories very soon.

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Happy now, Sam and Aaron?  :-)