I took a break from my WIP today, and spent the morning working on a short story. I’d already written fifteen pages or so about this character (a secondary character from a previous, still unfinished WIP), mostly backstory.
Today I made this character return to his hometown for a funeral of a woman he was close to in his youth, to see what would happen. But after a morning of writing and thinking, I’m no closer to the story; I haven’t even gotten to the funeral yet.
A smart writer would say to give the story more time and thought. Yes, but I wish I could write more efficiently and productively. So many writers seem to crank out stories quickly, but maybe that’s an illusion — when I read a story in a literary mag, I have no way of knowing whether the story took three weeks, nine months, or six years to write. Or maybe some people are fast learners and fast writers, and others, like me, are just slow.