What to do?

What do you do when you wake in the night and face the harsh truth that you cannot write?  Do you take solace in the fact that often bad writers make piles of money?  I know I can write histories with a bit of a flourish and I know too that one in ten of my poems are not horrid. So my attempt at fiction is filled with holes I will soldier on and someday finish but for now I think I will put it aside until I can hold my nose long enough to end it. Who knows I might join the ranks of bad writers who make a fortune!

In the light of morning I continued thinking about this.  I expect that the final product of this foray into standard fiction will be ok.  And, this morning, I reminded myself that this was an experiment. I didn't think I could write straight fiction - plot, characters, etc. I can, but not well. I chose to write an erotic romance as a female friend once commented on a snippet of erotica I had written and told me I should write for women.  Well, each draft of this experiment has been met with a list of problems - which I fix, then comes the next list.  This is usual of course in writing as writing is rewriting.  But I now realize that straight fiction is not for me.  I had difficulty coming up with a 'beginning-middle-end plot; I have had my greatest difficulty in constructing lifelike characters. The writing itself was fun - I am very good, if not excellent at a turn of the phrase, of making people feel physicality through writing.  I suppose that is why I am better at poetry and that form I prefer, the prose/poem, in multimedia.  And of course, histories supply me with the plot and the characters ready made!

So, I will do the final draft but stop the changes there, and get it up on Smashwords or the iBook Store in the next week or so. And that will be that for straight fiction for me.