Growing up I had a misconception about short fiction. I thought short fiction was just something that was easy to slap together and produce in great quantities. I know where I got these impressions from—from non-writing English teachers who never understood the art as an artist understands it. From lesson plans that tries to break apart the elements of a story in to unit plans without really exploring how the elements are put together. It is not their fault that writers make the art seem easy—when we know it is far from easy. We try to break it down ourselves as if it can be dissected like an insect in biology class.

The truth is that with any writing, the sum is greater than any of its parts. In short fiction, the work that is done in the plotting and the research is on par with that of a novel. The plot may be shorter, but a good short story is far from simple in its plot. It may not have as many characters or subplots, but the constraints on the story’s length forces the writer to make every word count. The short story takes our art and places it in a crucible to produce the strongest story in the shortest amount of words as possible.

Personally, I have problems with the short story. It is so tight and so condensed in plot that straight-jackets my desire to create the more complex plots that novels can allow. They are a form of the story that makes for a training ground to force the writer to improve and tighten his work. It is for that reason that I write short fiction. I may not have many short stories published—maybe I never will. The lessons I walk away with and transfer over to my long fiction only makes my noel writing stronger.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more information on the articles, blogs, novels, poems, and short stories I am writing.

This is the week my blogs seem to be focusing on rescheduling priorities. If you have read my other blogs (not just in short fiction) you will have seen that I overestimated the amount of work I would be able to produce this year. In some cases I may have been too optimistic; in others it was a lack of foresight on the changes that would come into my life from the outside.

Seven months in to this year, I find myself back at the old question: “Which should a newbie writer focus on—Novels or short stories?” I am going to continue to work on both long and short fiction, but over the next 8 months, the primary focus will be on long fiction. While I am working on the long fiction, I am going to begin plotting and re-plotting the crime drama short story “The Gangsta Way” and the modern fiction story “Dance of Death.”

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for the latest information on the articles, blogs, novels, poems, and short stories I write.

I have been slow on the second draft of The Indebted and have asked myself why? Outside of the normal answers any part-time writer would give, there has been one inescapable response: What do I do with a Novella? Scarily, an article in the most recent Poet & Writers magazine echoed my same question.

Before I go into the whole problem of what do to with my novella, let me explain for those who do not believe they have encountered such a strange beast. What is a novella? This is the question that plagues writers and publishers, and there is no real simple answer to this. The dictionary describes a novella as a short novel. Others define it as a long short story. Both descriptions are true and yet as useful as the appendix in your body.

You probably have read novellas and not known it. Have you read Ethan Frome, Old Man from the Sea, Heart of Darkness, The Awakening? If you have said yes, you have read a novella. If you said no, don’t worry…you have read one somewhere. These are just a few examples. (Ian Fleming even wrote at least one James Bond novella that was made into a movie, I am just not sure which of the three stories in my mind was the novella.)

The problem with novellas is that publishers do not believe that readers read them. In honesty, I can see their point. They spend a lot of money publishing them, they get on the shelves at your bookstore. The reader comes into buy a book. They can choose to buy a novel of 200 or more pages or a novella that is 50 to 150 pages (rough estimate, the page count for a novella is even in controversy). Usually the novel will win out.

So that leaves me with a dilemma: Do I try to get this published as a novella? If so, where? (Yes, there are a few publishers that will touch them and some contests) If not, then what? Rewrite it as a short story or a novel?

For now, I am putting it in the tomb (my drawer where I keep stories and let them sit until I come back to them to rewrite) and move on to another story. Please know, I am open to suggestions.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for the latest on the blogs, non-fiction, novels, poetry, and short fiction that I write.

After a heavy project at my “bill paying job” and my laptop breaking when the project ends, it feels great to get back my passion of writing. Those who may ask “couldn’t you write with a pen and paper” have never seen my handwriting.

Now that I am finally back to writing, I have started to redraft the novella The Indebted. When I finished the first draft I thought I would have to completely rewrite the story. As I have re-read it and started on the second draft, I am happy to have discovered that I do not need to do a complete rewrite. There are scenes that need to be redrafted, but not an entire re-write.

I hope to have this story out the door after it goes through my normal multi-draft rewriting process to make it a stronger story. Then it will be on to more poetry and more stories.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates on the blogs, short stories, novellas, novels, and poems that I write.