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First, I understand that this is not NaNolaWriMo--I'm not sure there is such a thing, though there should be--and I furthermore understand that the stated goal of this month's work is to produce a novel, of which there's an allegedly clear definition right up front on the NaNoWriMo website: 50,000 words. (I say allegedly because it's a clumsy, imprecise, unhelpful definition...which is in no way NaNoWriMo's fault.)
Nevertheless, having said all that, I'd like to suggest something to you that I suggest to those students of mine who ask if I'll serve as advisor for their undergraduate honors thesis...for which they'd like to buckle down and (finally) try their hand at writing a novel:
Write a novella.
Typically how this works is, the student and I do an independent study in the fall semester, the first half devoted to getting an idea of what the student wants to explore, doing readings of other works which try similar things, and helping the student figure out the story he or she is interested in telling. (Generally the student has nothing more than a vague idea at first, which is fine, so this questioning and prep work is vital to pinning the idea down. And an important stage for the rest of us, too.)
It seems like only yesterday--or like last Monday--that we were celebrating Short Story Month. But now it's June, which can only mean one thing: it's time for Novella Month.
I happily admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for novellas, not only because I recently served as judge for the 2008 Miami University Press Novella Prize--and got to serve as editor for the winning entry, Lee Upton's wonderful The Guide to the Flying Island, which you can, nay should, purchase here--but because the form itself is sorta the lovable orphan of the publishing world. At somewhere between 15,000 and 50,000 words, a novella is considered, at least by the people who do the considering, too long to run in a journal as a short story, too short to be published a standalone book, and thus are too often put back in the drawer. (Had the current attitude always been the case, would we still have Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Nathanael West's under-read Miss Lonelyhearts, Kafka's The Metamorphosis...?)
Novella Month, then, is a very good idea...yet another from the fine folks over at Emerging Writers Network. (The event even garnered attention from the LA Times yesterday in a piece you can read here.) Browse over to the EWN blog for reviews/discussion of recent and classic novellas all month, as well as notices of publishers like Melville House, which currently has novella series dedicated to both contemporary and classic work.
I also happened to see recently--on Facebook--that Charlotte's Main Street Rag is currently soliciting novella manuscripts (submissions must be postmarked by August 1st). See complete guidelines here.
Finally, the 2010 Miami University Press Novella Contest is open for submissions and will be until October 1st, 2010. As far as I know, it's the only novella contest that publishes a standalone book of the winning entry...and very nice-looking editions, at that. For complete guidelines, click here.
PS--By sheer coincidence, I'm awaiting Mario Bellatin's novella Beauty Salon in the mail, which I can't wait to read.
