Writer's Ambitions | #amwriting

previously published on my Halcja's Place blog

I've been thinking about my ambitions as a writer lately and I've come to the conclusion that I'm too vain. I know what I'm good at, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But because of that, I'm building up these castles of glory and recognition in my imagination. I want my novels to be good. Again, not a bad thing. But what I've come to realize is that I'm aiming a little too high. After all, I am a perfectionist (and I'm working on it!).

Who said that I only get one chance at any of my novels? It's my creation so I get to do with it anything that I like. Especially since I'm planning on self-publishing.

So I've come to the conclusion that I can start small and write and publish short stories or novelettes using the plots that I've already concocted in my mind. I can publish those and finally have this gestalt closed. And then just continue working on the novel version of the story.

When I come to think about it, many novels started out like this. For example, Flowers for Algernon was first a short story. And I've got one collection of Bulgakov's works that includes chapters from his Master and Margarita way before it became Master and Margarita.

I can write short stories that will later become subplots in my novels. In fact, I had an idea to write a whole collection of side stories for K&M.

Many say that writing short fiction is harder, but the good thing is that it's short, so you don't spend as much time on it as on a 300-page novel. This way you can get it published either in literary magazines or self-pub on Amazon and stop worrying that you're a writer but don't have a single publication.