We went away when there was still snow on the ground. We come back and the grass is edged with green. It feels like a new world, a new home. A vacation reboot of my physical location.
The slushing continues. Got a reply, very complimentary but not accepting short story collections as they are too hard to place. If you have a novel the email says. If I had a novel. Isn’t that the thought. If I had a novel maybe this would all be something different. I feel chuffed that this is not the first literary person who wants to read a novel from me, but I also feel realistic in the fact that a novel has so many words and so much concentration and I’m reading 2666 right now and cannot even imagine myself writing all those words (although I am bogged down pretty heavily in The Part With The Crimes section).
A novel.
All those words.
I see why people do MFAs. To have someone hold their hand as they write The Novel. I suppose I could do that. Then I remember I did a novel writing course with my Afghanistan/Pregnancy/Academia/Racial Politics barf of a novel and it went (let us be polite rather than accurate) poorly. It went quite poorly indeed. So maybe I don’t need tutelage. Maybe I just need to try.
So will I try?
So I’ll finish Wolf Children story. Have to proof read Faerie Story Book One (shout out to all my FtD friends helping me out with that). Have the rumblings of (another) story about bad mothering.
Or I could sit.
And look out the window.
I should really train myself to write fiction first on the computer rather than longhand. That would save me some time.
Comments
It’s so frustrating that short stories aren’t as easy to get published as novels — in many ways, I prefer short stories, and you’ve got such a gift for them. And novels are a long slog to write, so I’ve heard.
I’m so curious about Wolf Children and about the Faerie story, so I hope they get out into the wild at some point!
Author
I like short stories too. I am trying to read a short story each day because I like them so much.
I also, though, really love reading novels. I can’t say I love reading short stories, so I understand where publishers/agents are coming from. That being said, I don’t think I have a story that long in me. Sometimes it’s best to know one’s own limitations.
Wolf Children was worked on today. Faerie story — I just really need to get going on that. I just don’t feel like proofreading and correcting right now. Creating is always more inspiring than searching through text to make sure I used it’s versus its correctly. Also plot holes. That’s probably worse than grammar.