Short Fiction

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.