Do You Want Some Cheese with that Whine?

**I don't know what happened. This was scheduled to post yesterday, but it didn't show up. Sorry.**

I try not to complain very often. Negativity is a self-generating feeling that I try to avoid, but right now, I'm tired. I'm sad. I'm scared. I'm bordering on burnout in my day job and in my writing.

And, to be totally honest, I'm mad as hell at the people and situations that make me feel like a mime in a box!!!

To make matters worse, for the first time in almost ten years, I am completely empty of new story ideas. I have drawn my energy and my joy from writing for years. I have written a dozen novels, and started another dozen or so that fizzled at some point in their development (but they were fun while they lasted). My last two novels ran aground: one after only a few chapters, the other after three complete rewrites of an entire novel which I have now decided is hopeless.

Maybe now is the appropriate time for this to happen. The Writing Gods let me stay creative so I could hide in my stories while my life was in turmoil. While my life was imploding and I was fighting for my sanity, I was cranking out three and sometimes four novels a year. Now that I am getting better in my personal life, I guess it's time for the Writing Gods to give me a little lesson in the torment of writer's block -- the writer's equivalent of the Dark Night of the Soul. I suppose the time has come. I've been too productive for too long, and I haven't suffered enough as a writer.

And so, I find that I have no new stories to tell right now.  That makes me sad.

It also makes me wonder if that "dreaming new dreams" thing means that I should consider other options for my New Dream.

Being a writer was something I wanted to do since I was a child. With fourteen published e-books and two more finished drafts in the pipeline, I have proved that I can write novels.  I'm no Amanda Hocking but I've made at least some money every quarter for the last five quarters, and I have money coming in from Smashwords again for the first quarter of 2012.

While I'm dreaming new dreams, I've begun to wonder if it I don't want to consider trying something else.

For one thing, I enjoy editing much more than drafting. I wonder if I should offer to edit other indie authors' work.

Or, maybe, I should take a break from fiction for a while, and do something I've never tried before.

That sounds more and more appealing every time the thought bubbles up.

Hmmm.

I'll put all of this aside for now, because I try never to make a decision when I'm upset. I do, however, try to use periods of turmoil as opportunities to think creatively. I'm thinking very hard these days.