The Art of Short Stories

I haven't mentioned this before, but I am doing this little college course thingy in creative writing on the side, you know, in my spare time in between playing with the dog, raising my boys, blogging, writing and generally having a life.

Due to the increasing number of things that demand my attention and my bottomless pit of excuses I have a back log of assignments to submit. But look at the photo, some of these distractions are so darn cute!
These assignments really have no due date because I have two years to complete the course. The idea being that you just move along at your own pace and submit work when you are ready. Yeah... that's not working so well for me. I work better with deadlines, goals and ....a lack of procrastination.

College assignment? What college assignment?

I wonder if I'd have completed my degree in education if the university I went to lacked time restrictions or submission deadlines?
Actually, I probably would. I can be tenacious when I want something. I guess that's why I am finally trying to finish these assignments.

Here's the road block; I have to write a short story. I know, I know. It's no big deal. I write. In fact I have written in excess of 200,000 words between the two books I am working on, if you count the words that didn't make it through the edits. But I'd rather submit the profile piece I recently wrote for a magazine or perhaps thetongue in cheek parenting story or my mindless humor piece on raising toddlers... but DON'T MAKE ME WRITE A SHORT STORY!

Every time I sit down to write the damn thing I think of another great idea for an article that just begs to be written. After I have reworked the article and submitted it for publication and sometimes have the joy of hearing that it will be printed, I get back to the writing course... "Now, what was I suppose to be doing here again?"

I'm getting no where. Except for the fact that article ideas like to hound me while I am trying to write short stories... which is great... and not so great. I'd like to finish the course. Eventually.

The other teeny little road block is my perfectionism. I have never received anything less than a distinction for this course (yeah, I have managed to submit about six assingments so far) and the thought of bombing out with a crappy short story sends shivers up my spine and makes my fingers feel like lead on the keyboard.

I sit in front of my computer watching the little cursor flash...and... I got nothin'

I am beginning to think this writing gig is not for me. *sigh dramatically*

How can I have no problems writing a 96 000 word memoir, which is really literary non-fiction in form and full of 'characters', but I can't put fingers to keyboard and type a out one damn short story?

Maybe I feel more comfortable writing non-fiction?
I heard this quote the other day which said, "I write to know what I think."
That's me. That is SO me. I can hash something around in my head for days, but not know what's bugging me until I sit down to flesh it out with words. Maybe I just haven't transferred this skill to the art of short stories?

But the ridiculous thing is that so far in this course I have written a couple of short stories. I wrote one called Crawling, but it was heavily based on an actual event. I wrote two others that had to consist mainly of dialogue (which is an interesting little exercise to discover how well dialogue moves a story forward, reveals personality and motivation and delineates characters) Other exercises have consisted of sketches of places and characters (again easily based on my personal experiences of places and people). I can see why I have been doing well until this point. But now I am struggling to make these same skills work for me in a completely fictional short story.

So, any advice from my wonderful group of fiction writers out there?

Do you rely heavily on reality to write? Are you characters completely fictional or are they composits of several people? Where do I start? Have I just got my knickers in a knot about this whole 'short story thing? Probably...
How do you guys get started?
I just have to write 300. Teeny. Tiny. Little. WORDS!

Ahhhhhh!

Am I the only one with road blocks in their writing?