It's Okay If You Don't Write A Novel

My first Vocal piece was Firestarter, a very short story about a grieving young man who runs away from home and follows a santelmo, which in Philippine mythology is a type of fire spirit that mesmerizes humans. It is said that it is the spirit of spirit of a man who has died near a river, lake, ocean, or during heavy rains, and it seeks revenge on those who may have done him wrong. (More about that here, if you're interested.)

That story is only one of the many I've written throughout the past year. (The challenges here on Vocal only contributed to that, but I'm not complaining.) In the process, I realized that I really liked writing short form fiction, particularly flash fiction and short stories. I find them easy to write; just give me some prompts and I'm set! They're also how I'm able to deal with the neverending birth of plot bunnies in my brain.

More importantly, they let me finish something. See, that's always been my struggle. I have so many ideas, and I've tried for many many years to put them into writing as novels, but somewhere along the way I just... get bored. That's why I asked the lovely Meri Benson if she was up to writing a novel with me, because I saw that she'd successfully published her own books, and I figured I needed to collaborate with someone who actually got things done to get things done. (Now we have a Norse myth fantasy series and we're releasing our third novel and the final installment of the trilogy next month. But that's a story for another time.)

Anyway, I wrote more short fiction. I posted them here, I sent them off to submission calls for journals and anthologies (some of which got published!), I kept them in my laptop's drive to deal with later. I read a lot, too, particularly Vocal's own Madoka Mori (I love Lógos the most), and the works of my friend V Astor Solomon, whose piece And The Water Said Kneel over at Pseudopod is a favorite of mine. So it should've been all good, right?

Nope. I still felt like an impostor. I felt like I wasn't a real author. It was bad enough to have to deal with the stigma of self-publishing (also a topic for another time), there was also the fact that anyone who'd look me up on Amazon and other retailers would not find a backlist. I had no readers of my own (except for my family and some friends) and I was merely riding the coattails of an established author. But to have a backlist, and to be taken seriously, especially in the fantasy genre, I needed a novel.

Did I write a novel? No. I couldn't, remember? I even tried serializing to see if that would help, but I only made it to chapter 3 of A Stef in the Right Direction here on Vocal and chapter 16 on Seriality.

I felt hopeless. I felt like a failure.

What eventually pulled me out of that funk was the realization that I had friends who were fine with writing short fiction (like my good friend Vale who 100000% supports me in this), and that there is a market for short fiction. We're here on Vocal, aren't we? Not only that, Amazon has an entire section for short reads, categorized into 15 minutes (1-11 pages), 30 minutes (12-21 pages), 45 minutes (22-32 pages), 90 minutes (44-64 pages), one hour (33-43 pages), or two hours or more (65-100 pages), and then by genre. Add the fact that you only need a minimum of 24 pages to publish a paperback...

Viola. I published a 59-page novelette (13K+ words) last July. (The paperback took me until August because I had to learn how to format and use KDP and order proof copies and whatnot.) And I've actually sold enough copies to have a flat white at McDonald's now! How cool is that?

So, if you're ever like me: don't lose heart.

There's a place for us. ❤️