I’ve come to a conclusion recently and that is that I have much less confindence in my novel length work than I do in short stories/novellas.

I can whip out a short in a couple of days and feel GREAT about it. I’ve even taken to subbing them without my CP’s crit occasionally. I can read and do major edits in a matter of hours. But that’s the thing. They don’t really need major edits.

My long stuff does - oh, does it.

I’m not completely happy with any of the longer works I’ve written - and that includes the one that is out now (I probably shouldn’t admit that, huh).

It’s gone through edits (several times). Someone liked it enough to purchase it, yet I’m still convinced that there’s something wrong with it (though don’t ask me what as I couldn’t tell you).

I’ve got another long novel under consideration at a print pub. I don’t think that it’s the best that it could be. There too, I think there’s something wrong (though this one especially hard to fix as I’m not sure what the line is looking for). But I guess the fact that it’s still under consideration is something to be happy about.

And I’ve got another long work at one of my publishers. This is the one I’m really nervous about. My CP has read it and torn it apart. I’ve hopefully fixed it, but I have no confidence in it whatsoever. I think it’s good - kinda. But my confindence on this one is shot!! I cringe every time I open my email.

And at the moment I’m working on a long and a short. Well, mostly the short because I feel I’ll be better at that one. I need to build up my confidence for writing long - maybe I need to give that plotting thing a try.

Ugh.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Writing - theory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.