But I have a good excuse: I can only visualize 10,000 words at a time.
On those days when I'm out in the world and working out of a notebook, it's a lot easier for me to keep the plot of a short story straight in my mind than it is to organize the multiple threads of a book plot.
This isn't a way for me to justify procrastinating on the book, it's just a statement of the current facts-on-the-ground. I'm also confident in my ability to juggle multiple plots, anyways, so I don't have to worry about getting confused.
I've discovered that writing a book is different from writing a short story. Writing a sentence or two in downtime throughout the day works for short stories, but a book requires concentrated effort of at least an hour in length, because I have to remember where it's going.
My theory is that this is all just a symptom of my having written about a hundred short stories that I like but only one book that I am barely satisfied with. I've got the "short story" mindset down, and I need to practice the "at-length" mindset. Presumably the only way to do that is to write more books.
On it.
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I want to get better at writing Fantasy, by which I mean "Not Science Fiction per se". Yaknow, ghosts and magic and such. Or steam-punk. Or bio-punk. Or alternate history. Or some unholy union of all four, where the Nuclear-Powered Merrimac battles the Organic Regenerating Monitor while the opposing sorcerers Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis have it out in the dream-realm of Robert E. Lee's conscience. And the ghost of Stonewall Jackson is the narrator.
I call it "Sibyl War".
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500 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long To Die" - chapter 9
Short Story "Kritarchy" - in progress (~1/4)
It's nice to drop by and see how other writers are doing. I too try to make myself write every day, although my 22 month old sometimes thinks it's his job to compete with this goal.
ReplyDeleteI'm also working on a novel (my first) and am four chapters in. It's all too easy for me to get distracted by shorter pieces and I agree that they take different mindsets. The novel is fun, though, and allows me to explore more places. Good luck!
I invite you to drop by my blog sometime:
http://sciencefictionmommy.blogspot.com
Don't mind the novel-length (hee hee) potty training post currently at the top, just scroll down and you'll find some on writing.
Aww, it's got subheadings!
ReplyDeleteThis book is an experiment to see whether I enjoy writing books as much as short stories. I really enjoy writing short stories, though, so the bars pretty high. But the submission process for books is more fun?