All of my attempts at writing devolve into overthinking plot, characters, and motivations, and the result is always burnout. I've yet to go deeper than a handful of chapters into a book.

Perhaps "overthinking" is not the right term and I'm simply a pea-brained dum-dum who gets overwhelmed at the slightest hint of struggle, but either way, it's not working—and I've been at it for years. So, I'm trying to switch tracks by lowering my expectations and "pantsing" my way through a story.

At least, that was the idea. But I just can't bring myself to write something half-baked. As I write every sentence and paragraph, every line of dialogue and description, I ask myself, "Is this necessary? Does it serve some purpose?" Usually, the answer is, "No, and no," and I kill my darlings.

That takes me back to the planning board. What does this character want? Why? *That* leads to philosophical questions I'm not nearly equipped to answer, and at the end of the road, as always, lies exhaustion and the loss of interest.

This is not a question of, "How do I write the middle part of my book?" To get to the "how", first one must walk past the "what" and "where". It's not that I need to add conflict—I know that—but that I don't know what the conflict ought to be.

Neil Gaiman, in his course on writing, says (and I paraphrase), "You've got an idea for a story. Now you've got to figure out what it's about." **In a nutshell, that's my problem.** Trying to solve that mystery ends up with me lost in a forest at night, so I decided to take a time out and try my hand at something simple and lighthearted; pictures and ideas I want to flesh out into stories, no matter the length; things that I think I'd enjoy reading, not because they would inspire me or teach me something, but just because they'd be fun. In other words, because the journey would be what's important, not the destination.

However, without a sense of direction, the words I type feel like fodder, or lard or filler or whatever you wish to call it. So, here's my question: can one write an unambitious story without it feeling like a waste?

I believe it's possible because I've consumed—and enjoyed—many works that feel that way. Maybe it's one of those things that I like reading but not writing, but I'm hoping that's not it, because that would mean I'm staring at a dead end.