Hot Fairy Tales, or Can I Write a Novella?
Samhain (my publisher) recently put out a call for submissions for a new anthology of hot fairy tales. They want 20-25,000 words, which is novella length.
I wrote my first novel in 2001–a 60,000-word opus targeted toward the Silhouette Desire line, with much trepidation because it seemed so long. I mean, if you write in 12-point Times New Roman like me, that’s 180 pages of stuff you’ve made up about people you’ve made up. And it all has to make sense together.
I’d been a technical writer for years, I’d written magazine articles including a six-page thesis on satin (the fabric, it was for a sewing magazine), but a novel is completely different. I did it, although it was a typical beginner’s book–utterly unworthy of publication. And now I have several manuscripts under my metaphorical belt, all more than 250 pages long.
Can I write a novella? Well, I’m going to find out. I’ve started my story, which I’m calling “Finding the Briar Rose,” which is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. It’s science-fiction romance, of course, because everything I try to write ends up as science-fiction romance.
If I can write a page or so per day (in addition to working on my work in progress), I’ll still have something done before the deadline, February 10, 2010. Let’s see how it goes.
Leave a Reply