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.

poke, poke "Talk to each other, dammit!"

I've never had my characters all shut up at once. I do my best to get them to slow down and wait their turns so everyone gets his or her chance to be heard, and of course that causes them to get huffy because, really, who wants to be reprimanded? But yes. Dialogue is fun.

as if someone had ripped thier lips off.

This sounds like an interesting story.

I write short stories cause anything over twenty pages makes me panic about being longwinded and keeping all the the threads together. so far, anyway. Although someday, I want to write a novel.

Whereas I have to go back and cut out a lot of excess description and 'stage directions'.

There are about ten thousand different ways to write badly, she reflected gloomily....

Dialogue is definitely the hardest thing for me to write. I usually end up with three pages of description before I remember that the characters are supposed to be talking to each other. I've found that I sometimes end up with much more interesting (to me, anyway) stories when I just let the descriptions show what's going on, rather than trying to force my characters to talk. But while that can work for a short story, it simply doesn't go over too well for anything longer than that.