I had a slight problem the other day. A character that is going to be in my entry for the annual Mail on Sunday Novel Competition intruded into a piece of flash fiction I was writing. Suddenly Jennifer became Miranda- who on earth was Miranda? The character I was writing about at the time was most definitely a Jennifer...
Later that night as I was settling down to sleep Miranda explained who she was and that she was in my competition entry.
Now the competition mentioned above only requires 50-150 words of an opening to a novel with the word ROW used- fortunately the novel doesn't also have to be written, because if it did it would have to go on the waiting list...
This is where my problem starts- and this happens a lot now- what I think is going to be a short story will, by the time I've jotted down the ideas, have become part of a much larger and longer story. And I know from past experience that a story that goes that way just doesn't work by itself...
I know I should be glad that I have all these stories and characters buzzing around in my sub-conscious and I can fill my notebooks up with details to return to later, but I'm beginning to worry whether I can ever manage to come up with an idea that stays as a short story and doesn't want to be anything longer.
When I started seriously writing again- after many years of nothing-it was as much as I could do to write a 1,000 word short story, but as the years have gone by the natural length of my stories has increased: 1200-1300; 1,500 then 1,900 and now I'm having difficulty trying to get a story I've been working on to a 2,000 word length, when it actually needs to have another couple of hundred words, but it will then become an in-between length- not liked by some magazines...
Perhaps this is just a phase my writing is going through and in a few months I'll be coming up with nothing but short story ideas.
But at least I've got the ideas, so now I need to get on with some of them.
If you are interested in the start of a novel competition, Womag published the details on her blog last month, so go there. Good luck if you enter.
Carol Bevitt's blog on her writing and inspirations, along with occasional literature related news...
I find my writing goes in phases - sometimes I can't stick to one idea and my short stories become epics, other times what I think is a big idea reaches it's conclusion in a page and a half.
ReplyDeleteThanks Patsy, there may be hope for me and short stories yet.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with that entry, Carol! I can empathise with the problem of characters wanting to be other than what we expect of them. Sounds like you're meant to be a novelist!
ReplyDeleteIt could be Rosemary. :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Carol - I'm wondering whether you should give writing a novel a go! You can still do the short stories at the same time. Perhaps 'your muse' is trying to tell you something!
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right Diane.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently writing a novella, which might end up as a suitable pocket novel; plus I have a synopsis and first three chapters of what I refer to as my Dorset novel, which I will be returning to after the novella is done.
When I started writing again after many years of not writing, the first project I started was a novel. I got to the 40,000 words stage and realised it needed further thought.
I will go back to it one day...