The Long and Short of It.

I’m a fiction writer. That’s what I identify myself as. My life’s ambition is to finish a book. Ending things is hard, by the way. When I was younger (younger being age fourteen) I wrote nothing but ‘novels intended.’ Stories I intended to make novels. But of course that failed miserably. I did manage to write a 100 page story by the end of my first year at LP but it died as soon as I reached the plot. Funny how that works.

One of the big things I had to learn at Lincoln Park was how to write short stories. We didn’t spend nearly as much time on it as I would have liked, but that’s how it worked out. I had to find an end point for a story I didn’t want to end. In work shop I had to find stopping points for a story that I wanted to make a full length book so that it could stand alone. I wasn’t allowed to do that in my second year, everything had to be self contained. This is when I really learned to write short stories.

It’s actually kind of surprising that I’ve managed to read for every reading possible during my years at LP. I never missed a chance to read. Not for the public readings and not for the department readings. What’s surprising about this is the fact that I could find something that didn’t take ten minutes to read out loud. I’ve found that something like a five page story double spaced is around ten minutes to read. That doesn’t seem all that long to some, I guess, but for a reading it’s forever, especially for the reader. There are a few pieces I cut up a little in order to shorten their reading time.

I still kind of suck at writing short stories. I always want to write the longer ones. It’s gotten to the point where if I really want to read something for a reading I have to write it specifically for that purpose. Some of these pieces turn out pretty well, actually, like Water Lilies and Masquerade. But even Masquerade needs expanding. My fans, (aka Courtney) pretty much demand it. And I would like to do more with it. I really would, but somehow I find myself stuck once more.

This is my problem with longer stories. How do you keep them going? I seem to be stuck in a sort of limbo of creative writing. Not enough story for a novel but too much story for a short story. I secretly hate short stories that go on for like twenty pages. To me that’s not really a short story. Though I will admit, I have written stories that long before. And actually the longest complete story I wrote, that was fit for human eyes at least, is probably my favorite. It’s called What Could Be and it’s fifteen pages single spaced.

I recently wrote a story called The Way She Walks for the Alumni reading next Friday and as usual, I think I want to do more with it. But of course I don’t know what. It feels like a short story, I’ll give it that. It’s at about six minutes and three pages right now so I can’t do anything with it until after the reading. It’s one of those stories that come out of the blue, you know? I was thinking about walking toe-heel one night. Don’t ask me why. I didn’t know people walked like that until I read ‘Princess Academy’ by Shannon Hale. Apparently that’s the proper way for Princesses to walk, but no one walks like that. It’s extremely weird to do so, I know I’ve tried. It feels weird and it looks weird and so I wrote a story about it.

Now I’m rambling. The long and short of it is, short stories are hard, and so are novels. Long stories are the way to go, unless you want to read them out loud. Then you’re pretty much screwed. I wanna know how my classmates managed it.