One Trick Pony

bluntforcetrauma · Feb 16, 2008

I don't know if anyone is in this situation, but here's mine. I set out to write a short story and ended up with an epic (which I am proud of). Since then, all I can write are shorts. I don't feel I have another book in me.

Probably not a great way to become a best selling author, I know. Is this an odd thing to happen?

Fox The Cave · Feb 16, 2008

If you don't let it happen, it won't.

ishtar'sgate · Feb 16, 2008

bluntforcetrauma said:
I don't know if anyone is in this situation, but here's mine. I set out to write a short story and ended up with an epic (which I am proud of). Since then, all I can write are shorts. I don't feel I have another book in me.

Probably not a great way to become a best selling author, I know. Is this an odd thing to happen?

Perhaps nothing really BIG has grabbed you since you wrote the last one. Maybe your novel muse is on hiatus.

Linnea

Red-Green · Feb 16, 2008

Ralph Ellison published only Invisible Man and never finished his second novel, despite decades of essays and short stories. Nobody ever called him a one trick pony.

jwallace · Feb 16, 2008

Ever consider a novel that is basically a bunch of smaller short stories tied together with a unifying theme or characters? Irvine Welsh springs to mind here---he's a master at weaving short stories together with threads that tie the whole together.

Joe
www.freelance-zone.com

Stijn Hommes · Feb 16, 2008

It's not really weird for it to happen. Some people have just the one book in them.
Nevertheless, I would take Foxy's comment to heart. It won't happen if you don't try.
Shorts generally revolve around a very tight idea. Try to think bigger in order to get ideas that could fill a novel.

bluntforcetrauma · Feb 16, 2008

Fox The Cave said:
If you don't let it happen, it won't.

Haven't closed myself off to it. I just seem to have a scad of short stories in me.

ishtar'sgate said:
Perhaps nothing really BIG has grabbed you since you wrote the last one. Maybe your novel muse is on hiatus.
Linnea

Now that's a possibility.

Redzilla said:
Ralph Ellison published only Invisible Man and never finished his second novel, despite decades of essays and short stories. Nobody ever called him a one trick pony.

Point well made and taken to heart.

jwallace said:
Ever consider a novel that is basically a bunch of smaller short stories tied together with a unifying theme or characters? Irvine Welsh springs to mind here---he's a master at weaving short stories together with threads that tie the whole together.

Joe
www.freelance-zone.com

All my shorts have nothing in common except the writer.

Stijn Hommes said:
It's not really weird for it to happen. Some people have just the one book in them.
Nevertheless, I would take Foxy's comment to heart. It won't happen if you don't try.
Shorts generally revolve around a very tight idea. Try to think bigger in order to get ideas that could fill a novel.

The book was so huge in scope, that it took everything out of me. I'm very pleased with it though.

blacbird · Feb 16, 2008

Better than being a No Trick Pony.

caw

Danger Jane · Feb 16, 2008

bluntforcetrauma said:
All my shorts have nothing in common except the writer.

I think the point was that you could come up with an idea and then write a series of [intentionally related] short stories--episodes--to explore that idea. Not that you should analyze your shorts to death til you find a unifying theme.

Shweta · Feb 16, 2008

How long has it been?

It might just be that your brain is running on short stories for a while.

If it's been years, I might wonder, but if it's just been a few months, why sweat it? You're still writing.

Matera the Mad · Feb 16, 2008

Ya gotta write what ya gotta write. One of these days one of those short stories might mushroom unexpectedly. Then again if it doesn't, pat yourself on the back anyway. Short stories can be a lot harder to write than epics.

bluntforcetrauma · Feb 16, 2008

blacbird said:
Better than being a No Trick Pony.

caw

Bless you.

Danger Jane said:
I think the point was that you could come up with an idea and then write a series of [intentionally related] short stories--episodes--to explore that idea. Not that you should analyze your shorts to death til you find a unifying theme.

In all seriousness, aren't those called chapters?

Shweta said:
How long has it been?

It might just be that your brain is running on short stories for a while.

If it's been years, I might wonder, but if it's just been a few months, why sweat it? You're still writing.

It's crazy. I started when I was 46. Never had an 'oinkling' to write. I wrote songs for 30 years. I wrote a novel by accident. I'm 47 and completely out of musical or book length ideas. The shorts keep coming like a flood.

Matera the Mad said:
Ya gotta write what ya gotta write. One of these days one of those short stories might mushroom unexpectedly. Then again if it doesn't, pat yourself on the back anyway. Short stories can be a lot harder to write than epics.

I hope so. Writing that book was like running a marathon. What satisfaction and sense of accomplishment when I finished! Of course, that story was brewing inside me for 46 years, but I never knew it. Ain't got another 46 years for a sequel.

Birol · Feb 16, 2008

bluntforcetrauma said:
In all seriousness, aren't those called chapters?

No. What Danger Jane is talking about is different. If you haven't, read Hemingway's Nick Adams' stories. Those are episodic short stories featuring the same character and possibly related events. Chapters are sections of the same much longer story. They are much more connected and flow into one another in way that episodes do not.

blacbird · Feb 17, 2008

Let me see if I got this straight. You're now 47, and you started writing this first novel at 46, and completed it, and you're now worried about not having a follow-up?

I wrote a novel in my mid-late 20s, and a variety of stories, while getting an M.F.A. at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and couldn't manage to get anything published. I then drifted into an unrelated career, and put fiction writing away for many years, resuming with a new and much better project at age 48, and had a couple of moments of what seemed like promising success (winning some money in contests, getting some requests from agents for full manuscript reads, etc.). And wrote more stories. And achieved exactly nothing in the way of publication. I become 62 tomorrow, and I'm still hacking at my way through a third novel, with no prospects or aspirations of success.

And you're worried?

caw

Fox The Cave · Feb 17, 2008

^The George Costanza of publishing talks

brokenfingers · Feb 17, 2008

bluntforcetrauma said:
I don't know if anyone is in this situation, but here's mine. I set out to write a short story and ended up with an epic (which I am proud of). Since then, all I can write are shorts. I don't feel I have another book in me.

Probably not a great way to become a best selling author, I know. Is this an odd thing to happen?

I don't understand. You sound like this is a bad thing.

If you write short stories, then you write short stories. No big deal. You're still a writer.

Play to your strengths and let it roll.

Write on.

bluntforcetrauma · Feb 17, 2008

Fox The Cave said:
^The George Costanza of publishing talks

Dammit Fox! I spewed Diet Coke through my nose at that response. It burns! Any of you Brits got some Windowlene for my monitor? :roll:

bluntforcetrauma · Feb 17, 2008

Birol said:
No. What Danger Jane is talking about is different. If you haven't, read Hemingway's Nick Adams' stories. Those are episodic short stories featuring the same character and possibly related events. Chapters are sections of the same much longer story. They are much more connected and flow into one another in way that episodes do not.

I think I get the picture.

blacbird said:
Let me see if I got this straight. You're now 47, and you started writing this first novel at 46, and completed it, and you're now worried about not having a follow-up?

I wrote a novel in my mid-late 20s, and a variety of stories, while getting an M.F.A. at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and couldn't manage to get anything published. I then drifted into an unrelated career, and put fiction writing away for many years, resuming with a new and much better project at age 48, and had a couple of moments of what seemed like promising success (winning some money in contests, getting some requests from agents for full manuscript reads, etc.). And wrote more stories. And achieved exactly nothing in the way of publication. I become 62 tomorrow, and I'm still hacking at my way through a third novel, with no prospects or aspirations of success.

And you're worried?

caw

After what Fox said, I am.

brokenfingers said:
I don't understand. You sound like this is a bad thing.

If you write short stories, then you write short stories. No big deal. You're still a writer.

Play to your strengths and let it roll.

Write on.

No. I don't mean it's a bad thing. I was worried I weirder than other writers. After reading several posts, I'm not too concerned anymore.

IceCreamEmpress · Feb 17, 2008

You're anxious because you haven't started another novel in several months? Even though you've been writing short stories very prolifically?

Dude, you've got nothing to be anxious about. Keep writing the short stories, sell your novel, sell your short stories, and eventually another novel idea will come to you.

Sometimes it seems to me like people are trying to find things to worry about.

blacbird · Feb 17, 2008

Fox The Cave said:
^The George Costanza of publishing talks

Kramer!!!!

caw

Nyna · Feb 17, 2008

On a side note: if you watch any television, a good way to think of the difference between books with episodic chapters vs. plain old novel is to think about it like watching, say, The X-Files. If you strung together some myth-arc episodes, gave them a beginning and (ha!) an end, those would be chapters in a regular novel. If you just put together a bunch of monster-of-the-week episodes, that would be en episodic book. That's how I tend to think of it, anyway. Hope that's helpful.

As for having only one book in you -- some people do, and it's not a bad thing, necessarily, especially if you're still writing shorts. But I'm going to echo what several other people have said and tell you to give it time. Take a break! Write short stories, songs, essays, whatever -- you'll probably sit down one day and have written the first three chapters of your new novel before you realize it.

bluntforcetrauma · Feb 17, 2008

Nyna said:
On a side note: if you watch any television, a good way to think of the difference between books with episodic chapters vs. plain old novel is to think about it like watching, say, The X-Files. If you strung together some myth-arc episodes, gave them a beginning and (ha!) an end, those would be chapters in a regular novel. If you just put together a bunch of monster-of-the-week episodes, that would be en episodic book. That's how I tend to think of it, anyway. Hope that's helpful.

As for having only one book in you -- some people do, and it's not a bad thing, necessarily, especially if you're still writing shorts. But I'm going to echo what several other people have said and tell you to give it time. Take a break! Write short stories, songs, essays, whatever -- you'll probably sit down one day and have written the first three chapters of your new novel before you realize it.

So an episodic book would be almost like Hardy Boys mysteries tied together loosely?

dirtsider · Feb 18, 2008

Relax. First, you're still writing. That's the most important thing.

Second, from the sound of it, you just finished your first novel in the past year. If there's another one in you, it just hasn't bubbled to the surface yet.

Work the short stories out of your system. You might just be working up to your next novel.

The Scip · Feb 18, 2008

I say just write. My novel wasn't intented to be a novel, just a short story. The next thing I knew it was 85,000 words long. Since then I keep getting new idea. Some of the ideas I know are novels, others I know are short stories, but some of them I think of as shorter and when I start writing them they may turn themselves into novels. All I can do is wait and see.

Just write and if another novel comes from it; great. If not, you'll have your novel and a bunch of shorts.

bluntforcetrauma · Feb 18, 2008

dirtsider said:
You might just be working up to your next novel.

I hope so!

The Scip said:
I say just write. My novel wasn't intented to be a novel, just a short story. The next thing I knew it was 85,000 words long. Since then I keep getting new idea. Some of the ideas I know are novels, others I know are short stories, but some of them I think of as shorter and when I start writing them they may turn themselves into novels. All I can do is wait and see.

Just write and if another novel comes from it; great. If not, you'll have your novel and a bunch of shorts.

Thanks for that.

One Trick Pony

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