I want to focus my writing career on novels.  I like to tell stories, and novels give me a chance to dig deeply into their stories.  I get to look at them from different angles, include subplots, and surprise myself with character decisions I didn’t see coming.  Of course, novels take time.  Drafting one can require months, and revising it can take longer than that.  The process of taking the initial idea and following it through to the end, refining and polishing it, is exacting.

I also think it’s fun.  It’s a challenge the like of which I can’t really find anywhere else, and when I finish, I have something I can be proud of.  Of course, this is my current opinion, and at this stage I have completed one manuscript (written before I started my MFA, and when I finish the program I may well rewrite it entirely) and finished the rough draft of another (my thesis).  But as things stand, I love writing novels.

However. . . .

I mentioned that finishing novels takes a lot of time.  That means I spend months working on a single story.  If I tried to limit myself to just the one story for that long, I would probably lose my mind.  I enjoy telling stories too much to restrict myself that way.  I improvise stories for my wife on a daily basis, silly little bits of nothing to amuse her.  I run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, cooperatively telling a story with several friends.

And I write side projects.

This actually began as an experiment this semester.  Last semester I took a nonfiction workshop, taught by Ana Maria Spagna, that required me to turn in a new or revised piece every week.  I spent the whole semester writing nonfiction essays and developed a system of approach I could reuse.  This was not a formula, per se, but a way of looking at a topic that let me nudge my mind into getting words on paper and shaping them into an essay.

I got to like the idea of producing work on a steady basis, more frequently than the novels I look forward to writing.

Now we come to this semester, and in addition to starting my thesis, I signed up for a Directed Reading class in Short Forms, taught by Bruce Holland Rogers.  Bruce included an online discussion thread called the Sandbox, where the students are encouraged to experiment and play with the forms we study each week.  These pieces don’t generally run more than about a thousand words and no one expects posts to the Sandbox to be polished and ready to publish.

I looked at the Sandbox and saw a release valve for the non-thesis ideas that flit through my head.  I would focus for the semester on my thesis, of course, but I would try to post a new piece to the Sandbox every week or so, to give my mind a chance to tell a different story, or just express creativity outside the boundaries of my thesis.  And if it produces pieces I can revise and publish, so much the better.

I haven’t been able to post something every week, but I’ve written a number of new short pieces this semester without adversely affecting my thesis work.  In fact, I think my thesis may be better for the extra writing.  I even wrote a piece that would be too long for the Sandbox, a nonfiction essay written using the approach I developed last semester.

I like this balance a lot: producing new short work while developing a longer project.  I think I’ll continue it past graduation and into my writing career.

—–

Submissions update: No new submissions since my last post, I’m afraid.  I have a couple of new pieces to send out, but they need a little revision first.

Liked it? Take a second to support Stefon on Patreon!