What if You Can't?
...sometimes you need to make a decision
When I began writing, I wrote mostly short stories—well, long short stories—by hand, in pen, in my fifth grade notebook. What I remember most about those stories was that one was about a fairy and a vase, and that boy, did my hand hurt!
In more mature episodes of my life, I mastered the art of controlling my quantity of words. In nonfiction—article writing—that wasn’t so difficult. The editor set the length, and if I didn’t want my precious prose to be edited, I had to meet the length on my own. (Substack being an exception, as I am my own boss. Still, I have to consider what the traffic —ie, my readers—will bear.)
Not so easy in fiction. Spoiler alert: even my mystery novels run long, at least in comparison to genre tendencies.
On the other hand, I like a challenge. Plus, like most writers, I relish the status of ‘Done’ on any given wip. So, periodically, I try my hand at short stories. Lucky for me, mine have been written for anthologies or other self-published projects. Because I’m still writing long. For me, short stories average 50-75 double-spaced pages.
Fact is, I like the freedom that comes from working in the breadth of a novel. You can explore multiple characters. You can track people’s histories. You can create an ensemble of players and have room to do them all justice.
I can’t help but wonder—and here, those who know me will simply roll their eyes and vehemently nod ‘Yes”—do I just enjoy oversized challenges? Well…..
We have a large family. When I became pregnant with my third, a friend could only comment: ‘No one has more than two kids these days.’ Oh? She should see us now.
We once moved to a location where I could landscape. So, I built a bridge over a creek and created my own boulders to rest beside it.
At my house, redecorating involves my tearing a room down to the studs and re-doing from there.
I once spent a summer vacation compiling, formatting, printing, collating, and binding a collection of over 200 student writings and artwork for a book to be distributed the next school year. By myself on a home computer, with a printer, paper cutter, and binder.
And lookee here: I’ve made a list of 5 examples instead of the holy 3, and some of them include more than one thing!
Anyway..I’m not going to whine about how I can’t write short stories any longer. (The problem really is I can’t write short-enough stories!) But it does take some proactive decision-making to choose what types of writing you want to continue working in.
What do you do when one—or more—of your writing options loses its luster for you? Many of us dabble in several different forms of writing. Long, short. Fiction, non. Poetry, psalms. Scripts and plays. Songwriting. (Some day I’ll tell you all about INKAS.) All writing is Story. Even dry scientific reviews are telling the story of research or a procedure. What you write is really a choice of format and topic. Or audience.
Some people prefer one style over another; others try their hand at everything. Most of us probably choose one or two forms to write in most of our lives—my hero Isaac Asimov being one notable exception.
Since I started writing novels, the only short stories I’ve written have been for our group anthology. And as previously noted, they weren’t really short. Despite temptation to enter contests or try to write something in hopes of a quick turnaround, I’ve come to realize that I can’t really do short form anymore.
Do I have too much to say for a story? Maybe. And some people think I try to say too much regardless. The reasons I listed earlier really cover why I prefer the long form of writing. And while I may or may not write fantasy, a genre that lends itself favorably to lengthy tomes, I will continue to indulge myself with long form writing, regardless of genre.
There is no onus to realizing something just isn’t for you anymore. Why waste time and effort pursuing something out of a sense of obligation? There are plenty of obligations we have to keep in this world. Enjoy making choices when you have the opportunity. Spend your time where you get the most for it. Write your story.
My current endeavor, which you will see in this publication under the heading |Time for a Story|, will be in the form of episodic writing. I know I’ve actually published some of my older stories here in installments, but those were already written and had received feedback from readers. This will be a new venture, with me writing specifically for the format, and with the ending unknown.
The first piece is under construction, and I won’t start publishing it until I’m more certain of its chance of survival. When I do, I hope you’ll let me know what you think.
Last minute update: In the process of an online writing challenge [which I will discuss another time], I have been exploring the story I want to post here in installments. Halfway through the challenge, I have written over 13,000 words, and the tale is just begun. Told you I write long.