Yesterday I posted a short list of authors who wrote articles, essays and stories which evolved into books—memoir, novels, collections.
I was thinking about the way writers have to balance the short term against any long range plans or ambitions. It’s easy to get trapped in working on a daily basis, without being able to sink into a longer project.
The length of any written work and the time it takes to make it sing it don’t necessarily correlate, do they?
John Cheever apparently—famously— wrote his short story, “The Swimmer,” as a novel, then realized it needed to be compressed into a handful of pages. He wrote an entire novel as a draft. That’s just beautiful.
Sometimes a short story can take years to find the right shape and delivery.
I love the idea of stand-alone pieces building into a longer project, as a way to find that balance between the short-term, relatively immediate gratification while working on a book.
Today I was thinking about how Seattle writer, Lindy West, wrote regularly for The Stranger, and that work lead to her memoir, Shrill, which then became a Netflix series (filmed in Portland, down the street…)
Charles Mudede, also at the Stranger, wrote the column Police Beat for years, then knit the central premise of his columns together, along with a romance riff, for the gorgeous film of the same name as his column.
Anyone working on short pieces with a book-length or feature film in mind?
All writing takes time and thought. If you’re writing, keep going! I know I will. I am. I’m here.
M
I have been writing several stand alone cosplay stories over the past year. The intention was to put together a short story anthology. I think they would work together better as a novel. Currently, I am just enjoying the process of writing it all out.