There are times when I haven’t a clue. Times when I try and try to create, but end up staring blankly at the screen, glancing at my watch (and I don’t even wear a watch), getting up to pace and flip over records. Times that I should be working on other things, editing, reading, studying. Instead, I waste time, these times. And time’s a waste of time.

The thinking trick is as follows: think it, then do it. Once it’s done, do it again. Create.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But still, here I am, muddle-headed, sore-shouldered, feeling the heat that wafts up between the keys of my laptop’s keyboard, thinking of a walk, a snack, a beer. Ah, but it’s only noon. So maybe I’ll just take more Ibuprofen.

I guess I should feel some sense of accomplishment, after all, after months off the horse, I sent out a handful of stories this morning. Thing is, I don’t feel elation, but depression, stemming from this act of courage. I’ve already accepted that these stories will be rejected, and that it’s only a matter of time until they come back to me, accompanied by the nonsense drunken opinions of editors and/or slush readers. “There’s some good writing here,” the e-mails will inevitably read, “but we aren’t taking stories about gay wizards this month.”

And I’ll stomp my feet and yell, “What gay wizards? There are no gay wizards in this story! That’s another story, sent to another magazine entirely. You people are just messing with my head, aren’t you?”

I should develop a thicker skin. I should laugh it off, just keep the stories circulating, moving from hand to hand to hand until they find a permanent, if ephemeral home within the pages (or Webpages) of a magazine. But it’s easier to give that advice than it is to take it. Easier to say, “everybody gets rejected,” than it is to read the fatal form letter.

But I ramble. I mumble. I stutter. I struggle along and mutter.

Too much staring at the sun makes one blind. Too much staring at the blinds…

I lose my train of thought. I miss the train. I miss the training…

Perhaps that’s what it is; uncoupled from the strains and deadlines of school, I’ve fallen out of practice, fallen away from the habits that birthed fiction through my fingertips and onto the pixilated page. What’s it been, six months since I saw a story through from start to finish? And that, a short-short, rejected once and never sent out in public again.

And who, he asks, wears short-shorts?

Trust me, you don’t want to know (he hasn’t got the legs for ’em).