I'm waiting for summer to end.
I'm waiting for autumn.
I'm waiting for cool weather and rain.
I'm waiting for my daughter to go off to university.
I'm waiting for the building works next door to end so that I can think again.
I'm waiting for my frayed nerves to recondition themselves.
I'm waiting to stretch.
I'm waiting for a good time to polish and finish my last short story.
I'm waiting for inspiration to rewrite the failed story I wrote before.
I'm waiting for a good time to start making notes for my next fantasy series novel.
I'm waiting for the day I can go for a walk without collapsing with heat exhaustion, being crushed by tourists, reeling from sickening weed fumes, poisoning my lungs with car exhaust pollution and trying to avoid the mountains of litter.
I'm waiting for fresh air.
I'm waiting for the feelings of humiliation I felt during an interview for a job I really wanted to go away.
I'm waiting for the email to say I didn't get the job.
I'm waiting for the email to say I did get the job.
I'm waiting to jump up and down with joy.
I'm waiting to put my head on my desk and feel grim, unable to cry because I've been trying for so long and so hard, all without reward and without respite.
I'm waiting for the end so that I can begin.
I'm waiting for a beginning.
I'm waiting and I hate it because I want to be active, not be a blob.
I'm waiting for this depression to lift because it has become intolerable.
I'm waiting for a friend.
I'm waiting for love.
I'm waiting for success.
Sometimes I don't want to wait at all.  I just want to be a happy, energetic me.
I'm waiting for energy.
I'm waiting for happiness.
I'm waiting for an angel to put his hand on my shoulder and say "everything's going to be all right."
When I stop waiting, I stop hoping.
So I'm hoping.
I live in hope.
If not much else.

My new short story is not going well.  And with every subsequent draft, it seems to be getting worse.  All I can think to do now is to do something drastic like changing the third person past tense to first person present tense – but should I do this in separate drafts or at the same time?
The first drafts look like this:

• Handwritten:  This was, at the time of writing, the best draft.  The story felt new and fresh and exciting and the words spilled easily onto the page.
• Copy typing:  This was the draft I typed into my computer.  While not really an editing draft, it did give me a chance to see the story as a whole.  It was while typing it that I realised how awful it was:  duller than ditch water;  unbelievably unexciting;  and just unbelievable.  I began to make notes on screen saying things like “drop this” and “this doesn’t work” and “change this.”
• First edit:  Armed with notes and a carefully worked-out sequence of events, I began the first edit.  I was barely halfway when I realised that it wasn’t working.  It didn’t matter what I did to the story, it was always going to be a non-starter.

It was while I was working on this last edit that I thought perhaps it would work better in the first person.  Being right inside the protagonist’s head might make it more personal, more intimate……and also freer.  The writing is tight and stale.  Technically, it’s fine.  But it has no soul.  And since it’s all about soul, it feels to me that I’ve forgotten how to write.
You have to wonder how this could happen to someone who has been writing for donkey’s years.  You’d think I’d know how to write by now.  And yet (I keep reminding myself) some of my best writing has come from painful rewrites, agonising edits, and even major style changes.  This is not the first time I’ve decided to change the third person to the first – I did it several chapters into a difficult novel and again in a novelette when I realised I couldn’t find the “voice” of the character.  In fact, I struggled so hard to find the “voice” that it eventually became part of the story:  the character had no voice.  He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) speak.  It was a brilliant decision that gave the plot the resonance it needed.
 
What bothers me more than having this current short story fail on me is that it’s the second time this year.  Two* short stories have failed in a row.  I’ve left the last one to “rest” and intend going back to it after this one is done.  But I no longer feel confident that I can fix it up.  It’s been through several edits and each time the plot failures become more apparent.
 
I hadn’t planned to write short stories this year.  I had planned to edit That Difficult Novel.  I had planned to write the next novel in my new fantasy series.  I had been so sure that I would have found an agent by now for the first novel in the fantasy series.  I thought I would have made some progress.  Instead, I’ve ground to a halt.
 
This is about as bad as it gets for a writer.  Everything you write feels crap.  No one gives a flying fuck about your writing anyway.  And it turns out you are Sisyphus at the bottom of the hill again.   

*Realised later that I've actually had three stories fail on me this year:  I forgot the hugely long and complex Exodus Sequence two-part story I was working on.  So traumatic was that failure that it slipped out of memory.....