The HEA Cafe

I nearly missed today’s blog because I’ve been deep into writing a short story for an anthology. It’s actually a horror short, rather than a romance, so I tend to stay out of “civilized company” during the process, since I’m not of a warm and fuzzy mindset. LOL!

I wound up writing this story longer than normal. I tend to stay in the 2,500-5,000 word range in most of my shorts, but this one wanted to be longer. That’s interesting to me, because in general, I write to word count. It’s very unlike a novelist to do that, but I came to books out of magazine article work. Word count RULES in magazine work. You have very set guidelines—500 words, 1,000 words, 1,500 words, and that’s that. Often you lose space by the editor requiring a sidebar (those little colored boxes with complimentary information.) It’s always part of the word count, like a 1,500 word assignment with two 250 word sidebars. So that tells me I only have 1,000 words to write the article, because I can’t fudge the other two. Sidebars are really important to magazine editors because of the nature of the business. When assigning an article 6-9 months ahead of publication, the editor has no clue what advertising will be purchased for that issue. With sidebars, an editor can pay for a longer piece, and then cut it at the last minute by dropping a neatly boxed word count, if someone bought a larger ad.

But in novels, an author tends to ramble along with secondary characters and subplots and the like. Short stories are difficult to write with subplots and secondary characters are often two-dimensional. But sometimes, when an idea for the story is really richly textured, it takes time and space to develop them properly. That’s how it was with this story. It just “wanted” to be longer so I could do justice to the mythos (Cthulu) and the plot. Tricky venture, that. It might be that I’ll have to cut it in half to meet the market I intended it for, and that’s going to be hard. There’s so much in the story that’s good, but it’s WAAAY too long for either magazines or the anthology I’d planned the story for.

I’ve discovered that there are few writers who excel at BOTH short stories and novels. I think that’s because it’s a whole different mind-set. Short stories are a slice of time, like a self-contained chapter of a book. But they have to arc appropriately with a defined beginning, middle and end. Sometimes, that’s really easy. Often, though, it’s HARD. A lot of book authors I know have a difficult time when asked to contribute to an anthology because it doesn’t occur to them that you can’t just write until the story’s done. You have to fit the story in the box you’re given.

Normally, I find it a challenge to do that, and once I step away from this story for a few days or a few weeks, I’ll probably find a bunch of words that don’t need to be there for the story to resolve. But for the moment, every word (in my mind) is pure gold and I don’t want to touch it for fear of ruining it.

Which is why it needs to go into a desk drawer where it can sleep and I can get distance from it.

Now, it’s time to crawl out of my hole and back into the light where I can be warm and fuzzy and write the next great romance!

Have a great Wednesday!