Getting from A Short Piece to A Big Book
Well, I’ve got a ton of ideas on how to promote my Great American Novel on the road. My next stop is to nurture these short stories into a Great American Novel. That quest leads me to my next seminar, “From Stories to Novels: Crossing the Great Divide.” This enlightening meeting was monitored by Jonathan Liebson, a professor at The New School. He was joined by Thisbe Nissen, Anthony Johnston and Michelle Wildgen.
Jonathan has published a few short stories and has just completed his first novel, so the pain was fresh. I suppose the best insight from him was to not confuse a messy short story with a lot of characters and plot threads for fodder for a novel. The best quote for inspiration was “Do what you want. Don’t feel pressured into writing a novel if that’s not what you want.” And the best indicator of an upside to struggling through the novel writing process, “Writing short stories becomes easier once you start writing a novel.”
The major goal while writing isn’t to finish. Finishing will come if you can figure out how to get the reader to keep turning the page. So writing a novel is really solving that problem. The other panelist pretty much “Amen-ed” to that.
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