Alright ladies and gents and sea anemone vents. Hehe!
I have a problem.
A big problem.
No, it's not my medical surgery, that went well. Don't worry! That is the reason my writing slowed down, but no, this is a different issue.
This is a creative issue.
[This is where we insert the internet meme, "Everybody's so creative!" Haha! No I jest.]
I can write raw, intense poetry.
I can write film.
But when I try to work with short stories, I always end up with novels.
Not even novellas, which are roughly fifty pages.
Nope.
Big beautiful (mostly Gothic) splashy novels.
Not because I am undisciplined.
If anything I think I am very disciplined.
I write every day, multiple times a day.
I have crates, plastic CRATES under my bed, which contains my first stories.
[Cue the dramatic music, where the archivist has on a set of gloves two hundred years from my passing, delicately handling the NOTE BOOK PAPER, and pencil chicken scratch. "Now here we have a late twentieth century pencil draft of a novel from Charlotte in her early stages, when she was still developing her voice--"
Ok. I have gone too far. I will come back.]
The problem is, I see the whole cathedral before I see the single stone.
I see the emotions, the lighting, the texture.
I see it like a movie in my head, the whole project.
Given my personality as a Virgo (we are the PREPLANNERS of astrology with a PINCH of control freak. A pinch!) and my perfectionism - yes I am really calling myself out here - that does not bode well.
When I sit down to write, I see characters as people.
That may sound basic, but it's a curse.
Because that general in human history, what was beneath what was written about him?
That painting, "Portrait of an Unknown Woman," why was she unnamed?
What would have happened if she was?
The dark, deep, penetrating eyes. The calm almost arrogant yet placid expression. Who was she?
Why couldn't she be named?
These things start as questions, and then questions turn into stories, and then stories turn into verbal cathedrals!
I will give you an example of why it's so hard for me.
I remember being in high school, trying journalism. I hated it. Not because I could not write. Because I could not be small.
Some people say, well true journalism is revealing, it's truth telling! You strip everything down to the bones!
I shutter. The inverted pyramid. The tight word count. The pressure to condense everything into a few hundred words.
It felt like trying to breathe through a straw.
If I were an anatomist I would be terrible.
I need not just the bones.
I need the muscle, the fat, the face shape, the story of why?
That was my first clue that I was not a short-form writer. But I did not listen. I kept trying to fit myself into shapes that were not mine.
I believed - and still believe - the only way we become a better writer is to PUSH.
[I am also very stubborn, if you have not caught onto that. I can poke fun at myself! I know!]
Now I am working on a short story — The Velvet Mask. Historical fiction. Alternate history. A valet who disappears because he knows too much, based on real fact, by the way.
I added in a friend, a maid who searches for him, because people do not go missing usually in a vacuum.
Someone cares, someone always cares - it is often why abusers isolate their victims.
[I will tell THAT story, that non fiction story, someday of my own survival, but not today. Even twelve years later, and with the anniversary of the abuse turning supremely ugly in August...well, that is literally a story for another day. But I am safe. That is what matters.]
But this story?
This unflappable, incorrigible story?
It will not budge.
I have rewritten the opening five times. I have changed the point of view twice. I have thrown out entire scenes.
I have realized: the story is not a short story. It is a novel. It was always a novel. I just kept trying to compress it into something it is not.
It's like it KNOWS it is meant to be a bigger.
Which is great, but also, infuriating for me.
Here is what I am learning:
Sometimes you need to challenge yourself. To try something different. To see if you can write leaner, tighter, smaller.
But sometimes — often — the challenge reveals something about you. Not your weakness. Your scale.
My style is cinematic. I write in wide shots and close-ups. I move through rooms, tracking characters, noticing light and shadow and the small details that make a world feel real.
I take a SEED of truth; suddenly it is a gorgeous vibrant garden.
That does not work in a short story. Not because short stories are bad. Because they are not built for that kind of movement.
You can still have movement & detail, lush and tempting.
But it moves faster!
And that is okay!!
What I am learning:
It is okay to acknowledge your own writing style.
It is okay to know that you are a novelist, not a short story writer.
It is okay to challenge yourself — and then to accept what that challenge teaches you.
I am still going to write short stories. Sometimes. When the idea fits.
But I am not going to force them. I am not going to judge myself by a standard that does not belong to me.
I am a novelist. I write novels. And that is not a failure. That is a fact.
So if you are out there, struggling with a story that will not be small —
You are not alone.
You are not undisciplined.
You are just writing at your own scale.
And that is worth honoring. Really!
