Friday 5 November 2010

Waffling On

Short stories rock.

Short, sharp shocks that require no real commitment to read.

So how come recently every time I start a short story, the bastard grows legs and develops into a fully fledged monster that 6 A4 pages won't do justice?

The problem in the beginning was finding ideas that went somewhere.

Now the problem is every story WANTS to go somewhere and take me along for the ride!

Four times in the last two months, I have started work on what I intended to be the last short story that would complete the 12 story collection that will pad out the paperback edition of Swan Song (yes, that old chestnut again, bite me), and every time, the story mutates into something that 6 to 8 pages of material couldn't possibly contain.

So what do I do?

Chop the legs off a running beauty of a story and prematurely bring about it's demise so I can include in a paperback collection? Or start from scratch with an idea that hopefully won't grow a further head?

I'm actually asking!

In truth, and I wasn't going to admit this, I went back and looked into my older work, stuff that NO ONE has ever seen, and pulled a bit of material from it in order to further my collection.

Problem is each idea that frustrated me then blossoms into an uncontrollable flower the minute I put pen to page, or fingertip to key. I can't keep these bastard stories short anymore.

Is it time to write a follow up to 'War And Peace?'

With vampires?

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me?

3 comments:

  1. I totally know what you mean! I've just written a short story (I say short, but it ended up being 12K)for an anthology. I struggled to keep it to that length and really wanted to write more. Now I find myself kind of hoping it gets rejected to I can develop it into a novel! I just didn't want to let my characters go...

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  2. I just got done reading Swan Song and I loved it! You have an amazing voice and it read so easily. I loved so many of the lines, that I had to reread them just because I enjoyed the metaphors and wording so much! Very delicious and enticing story :) So in my opinion, write another short story to complete the 12 story collection or release it as an 11 story collection! Either way I'm looking forward to reading more of your stories!

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  3. Thank you so much Sam! What wonderfully kind words! These 12 stories, surprisingly, were harder to write than I expected. Well, the last three were! I think you'll like them!

    Marissa, I'm delving deeper into the simplest concepts and coming up with arms of material! Such basic ideas are springing legs like mutant fish. Ermmm, mutant fish that have sprouted legs, naturally.....

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