I just finished a 10,300 word "novelette" (I guess that's what I'd call it), and I'm letting it sit for a week before I proofread it for the final time and submit it. So I have a week off, so to speak. I've been looking over a couple of older pieces of mine that I haven't reread for years. One is a screenplay I'm thinking of turning into a novel, and the other is an incomplete novella (23,000 words with no end in sight). Both are better than I remember them. I'm also in the midst of a short story I had intended to work on while my novelette is waiting for its proofread. This short story has grown in concept since I began it, and it's going to be a lot longer and more philosophically deep than it was originally supposed to be. So, while I have a project done and ready to submit, I find myself with three projects to work on. Two of them are old, but all three have grown since I began them. I was just looking for a short story to work on while I got a week's worth of distance from my novelette, and now I find myself with three potential novels staring me in the face. It's kind of an embarrassment of riches, but it's also a little intimidating. I'm looking for something nice and short, something I can complete and submit in a month or so, but everything I touch seems to want to be bigger than I originally wanted. Does this sort of thing happen to any of you? Do you go back to your older stuff and find more there than you had intended? Do your short stories become novellas and your novellas, novels? Do you find that the more you write, the more you HAVE to write?
