An Attempted Year without Novels, and the Results
Image by ❄️♡💛♡❄️ Julita ❄️♡💛♡❄️ from Pixabay
Early this year, I decided that I didn’t want to write novels for a year to see where it got me. By July, I had decided “maybe just one novella.” But I’m here now to say no.
I wrote my novella in July, and immediately knew that it needed more work. So I did some more research related to it, figured out some tweaks to make to it, and … promptly fizzled out on the idea. There are chunks of the book that need to be entirely rewritten to turn it into the vision that I have in my mind. But I can’t seem to muster the enthusiasm I need for doing that work. I spent most of November trying to make headway on it, and ultimately wrote about 1,000 new words in two early scenes. And that was it.
So I’ve moved that novella back to the backburner, again. And it’ll stay there for a while, until I finally have brainpower, motivation, or enthusiasm that makes me really want to return to it.
In the meantime, I’m going to work on writing more short stories and poetry. With the number of collections I’ve been releasing for the last couple of years, and into 2023, my stock of short stories is getting a bit thin, so I’d like to spend some time replenishing that and really feeling good about my shorter writing.
So ultimately, making the decision to not write long in 2022 was probably the right decision. I can continue to revisit that decision in the future, and maybe someday I’ll come back to this novella or any of the other partially imagined novels I’ve got kicking around in my head!
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