I’ve written dozens of short stories, but I’ve never completed a novel. Oh, I’ve ventured a few, but I’ve never seen them past 15,000 words.
I’m just a short form writer. Poems? Easy to produce. Flash fiction? You got it. Short stories and novelettes? Now we’re talking months of time, but I can manage it. But sixty to a hundred thousand words? Not me.
Not until now.
The challenge: over the next few months, I am going to start and complete a novel.
It is not going to be a good novel. It’s going to be a first novel. It’s going to be full of fits and starts and many failures, not to mention lots and lots of prose that makes me want to weep (not with joy). But I’m going to figure out how this long-form works. I’m going to write a beginning, middle, and end — with a few set-piece scenes in the middle to keep the whole thing going. And it’s going to be fucking long.
Before I haul out on this breathless adventure — one hand carrying a laptop, the other holding a lantern and blue-glowing elvish sword to fend off the grues — I’m making one last pit stop here, in the Land of Generous Writers. Any advice for an inveterate short storyist making the transition to novel length?