Tight Margins

From the Speakers: THE IMPERIAL MARCH by John Williams

Quick post today--gotta get back to work.

The crappy thing about stories is they can be so stubborn sometimes. I've hit on this before, but I've found that if I try to force a story into becoming something it isn't--if I try to make it shorter, for example, or longer, or more marketable in any of these ways that don't relate to quality--they simply refuse to budge. In my experience, stories are discovered, and as such, are things. You can not will things into different things, much as you try. Thus, a story that is long must be written as a long story--it is nothing else, and if you try to make it short, you will inevitably be disappointed.

This is the dilemma I've struggled with lately, as stories of fewer than 7500 words are preferred by most markets. But the one I've stumbled upon recently, the one I'm working on, is decidedly longer. At the moment, it is 14000, and I have an inkling that there are at least 2000 words left to be discovered.

I don't know what I'm going to do with it or where I'm going to submit after it's finished. But that's not going to come close to stopping me from finishing it. So, gotta run--this adventure is nearing its climax!