Friday, October 23, 2020

Writing a novella is harder than writing a novel, fight me!

 Dear Reader,

I am ready to bash my head against something hard until I pass out because I am so frustrated with the novella I'm working on. I literally can't gauge a good stopping point. So many plot bunnies come out of the woodwork and nest in the storyline it is bonkers! I still haven't come up with a pen name yet for this project. I'm one step away from going with a random name generator. 

Each time I think that I have hit a good ending point, more plot reveals itself. More stuff needs to be resolved from previous plot elements. Characters that were originally just background set pieces suddenly become important plot elements and integral to the story. It's just very exasperating. This is why I don't write short form fiction. I sit down to write a short story and next thing I know I'm passing 30k words with no end in sight.

How the hell does Chuck Tingle do it? He's the most prolific e-book author that I've seen out there and he's writing stuff that's a hell of a lot shorter than what I've got. I keep thinking if I can manage to figure out the formula or whatever witchcraft that man is using to keep his word count relatively low while still telling a full story, maybe I can get some decent e-books out there. Some theorize that he's got a formula down. I don't know. All I know is being able to pull off an e-book in the span of two weeks is an impressive feat. To do so in such a manner that you maintain a large fanbase and keep the story quality high enough for the fanbase to come back book after book is equally impressive.

Editing this novella is going to be a headache, but it's going to be worth it. Now, if I could only figure out a pen name. That, aside from the ever growing word count, is my biggest problem here.

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