Though now that I think about it, the Rowling-Gabaldon bench isn't such a bad place to be. I mean, if I can get even a small fraction of their sales my career is made!

How do people ever manage to write short stories and novellas?

It's easy. Write less.

Seriously, my favourite fanfic form (where I can do anything I like) is the 100 word drabble. I was very amazed when I had a fic (really a series) hit 89 000, and I've never had an original one hit more than 60 000. The current novel (which has been brewing a long time but is only thirteen days old on paper) is just over 10 000 and about a fifth of the way through.

Edit: Could I have used brackets (wonderful device though they are) any more in that post? Three sentances, and a (intresting and detailed) set of parantheses in every one!

Time in drama is a very malleable aspect. My friend Adam-Troy Castro did a wonderful SF/action novella ("The Wonder Drug") where about 3/4s of the story takes place in about a minute and a half.

Another writer friend of mine points out that in certain kinds of story, conversation is the action.

Mine, for instance. Left to myself, I write radio plays. Then I have to go back and edit in the other four senses.

Heh. My 7000 words are mostly dialogue, with connecting bits as needed to get my protagonist from point A to point B so she can talk to someone else. I have to go back in and perk up the action and description at some point. My rough drafts read a bit like shooting scripts, sans clever asides.

I am dialogue's bitch. One thing I love about my unabridged Count of Monte Cristo is the pages of snarky dialogue between two characters. Though every now and then I have to count up to the last identifier so I can keep track of who's saying what. I'll go "Wait, I thought he was a Bonapartist, why is he saying those things? Oh, I see, I lost track, the Bonapartist is over there, this is the Royalist. OK."

The good days are when I look up and realize that I've put out nine pages of new stuff in one day, and I didn't have to think once. As opposed to the last few days, when I hit a wall mid-scene and it's not moving. Kind of like having an SUV that can't get over a barrier. Rev, rev, rev, and all you're doing is burning rubber and the clutch.

I've only got a bit over 6,000 words in mine, and until I hit a groove, getting one word out at a time is super hard. I envy all you guys who can just churn out massive works. I'm definitely more of a novella type, though I am getting better at longer stuff. And I agree that dialogue is definitely the most fun to write.

all you guys who can just churn out massive works

Churn. Churn, she says.

giggling hysterically as I tug on the chain to my muse, who's feeling like Moby Dick on the end of a fishing pole

Envy me when I actually finish this thing.

dialogue is definitely the most fun to write

Fun! Fun? There are days when it's harder than anything else, when they all go dumb as if someone had ripped thier lips off. Well, mine do.