I am shy on words these past couple weeks. I've got plenty of thoughts and feelings but they aren't translating into reader-friendly material.

I'm noticing something a little bit alarming in my writing process. For most of my life I wrote because I had to, because stories burned themselves into my unconscious and begged to be told. I wrote novels to entertain myself, and with the delicate notion of publishing them as an afterthought, a possible prize someday down the road. Now I find myself saying, "Do I really want to invest the time in that short story when the lit mag scene is so glutted?" "Do I really want to write another novel before even one has been published?"

Is this just a phase I'm going through, or is this the negative repercussions of longing for publishing success for too long?

Anyone?

JPR