Short Stories

Currently reading:  Dubliners (Signet Classics)

Dear Reader,

I am still becoming accustomed to working on a sales floor all day.  Some days it feels like it is getting easier, other days it doesn't at all.  However I need to start working writing back into the routine if I ever want to get published.

A while ago I mentioned that writing a novel terrified me.  The length and amount of details needed for a novel is daunting.  I am reminded of my first attempts at writing on my first computer.  I struggled at size 20 font to fill more than two or three pages worth of story, wanting to drag out the story to make it longer.  I am always overwhelmed with the idea of filling a novel with a story.

At the same time, short stories aren't really for me either.  Many suggest that to be the best writer you should write what you prefer to read, and I much prefer novels to most short stories.  There are exceptions to any rule, but I prefer to be able to lose myself in a novel for hours on end than to read a short story that ends much too quickly.  I enjoy taking the time to get to know the character and the world, whether the pacing is leisurely or fast paced.  Many short stories just do not do it for me, I just get my bearings in the story when it's over.

So I suppose I should suck it up and brave the novel.  I might not get it right the first time.  It might revise down to a short story in length when done, but between setting out for the brevity of a short story, or facing the daunting task of a novel, I'd prefer tackling a novel.

Which do you prefer reading?

Until next time,
Rose

Novels

Reader,

I hate to admit it, but novels terrify me.  I understand how to write scenes, and even short stories, but a novel length work still sends me quivering away.  The more I struggle with my varying projects that look to be novel length, the more I worry they'll never be good enough, and I'll never be good enough.

Don't get me wrong, I've participated in National Novel Writing Month twice thus far, and even won it once.  I feel my novel from last year had amazing premise, but I am at a loss for where to go from there.  The novel as it stands now is only a third done, and has been sitting on my net-book for months untouched.  I hope to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year, if only for the fun of it, but novels still terrify me.

So why tell you this?  I have a project that I'm planning out.  It's a project I was hoping would make a powerful short story, one I could send to the magazines in a few months once I polish it out a few times.  So imagine my horror when the story starts to grow bigger than a short story.  The themes and issues are too large, I fear, to condense into even a twenty-four page short story (Glimmer Train's maximum word count is 12,000 words).  Only time will tell how big this story will get, and how far I can revise it down.

Are you scared of novel length works?  Why or why not?
Also, when do you know when a project is a short story, and when it's destined for something more?

Until next time,
Rose