I don't like getting into arguments over a book's length and what constitutes novel vs novella. I think it's one of the stupidest arguments to bring into the question of a story's quality. When something like the Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury speaks more to you than a hopelessly long fantasy novel you've just finished, then quality counts. I've written a story over 120 000 words and there is little to nothing of use in it. I would have to rewrite it from scratch and it probably wouldn't end up half that length because I can recognise when something is needlessly bloated. I'm trying to read Under the Skin while simultaneously bemoaning how much better the film adaptation is for its scant dialogue and heavy reliance on visual exposition. To take on the ambitious task of writing a novel after being known for shorts, it is a daunting task, especially when people make it sound as such. But if it's obvious in some cases there's a lot of redundant words involved in making it across that threshold of short to novella to novel.
I can finish a novel length story around 50,000 words in two to three weeks now. I can write 30,000 + words in six days because I don't have much else going on. I finished the original draft of Into the Other, my last novel, in 13 days. That didn't mean any of this is any good. In comparison, it took me 8+ months to finish Live to Tell, which is barely 33,000 words. And I've just recently finished an 1900 word short story I started in 2015. Yes, it took me four years to finish it because I didn't know how. That's how easy it is to lose focus on a project, even if it's that tiny. You lose momentum if the story isn't letting you end it. I have many unfinished projects now, mostly from high school. I have a box full of material and maybe 1-2 % has seen the light of day. I find it hard to believe a lot of writers do multiple drafts of books if they're faced with a deadline, but when you're starting out, you write a lot of crap. It's best you do, it's better than a blank page. But you know what will work and what won't, usually. The editor who looked over Into the Other praised my succinct descriptions; I'm not big on lengthy paragraphs of detail. I'm much better at dialogue, to the point I think I should be a screenwriter and not a novelist.
I always maintain people read lengthy books to say they read them. You can rarely get it out of them if they liked it or even understood the subtext. I came from a town that only had two television stations in operation until right before I left town, and I still wrote during class as well. I dedicated more time to this back then than I feel like I do now. But it's mostly terrible and I don't like looking them over. I salvaged one thing and I'm happy with how it turned out, but there's no way I'd let you read the original story. I didn't use a single line of it in the new version, maybe just a couple of character names and basic traits. You can read an author with a high output but I'm sure you've thought they've become one note. I don't think length dictates any form of quality. Some of the most popular books out there needed editing but the authors were so egotistical they let every useless word go to print, including spelling mistakes. Having that level of arrogance that every sentence you've written is golden the moment it emerges on the page makes you a terrible author. I don't really care how much you've written, if it's terrible, why even show it to anyone? And spending years finishing it doesn't make it better either. If there's no effort shown to demonstrate the basic fundamentals, your output is irrelevant.
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