The Ever Elusive Short Story

So, I think I may have finally written a short story. I think so. It's a bit touch and go and I can't really say for sure until I get some outside confirmation on this, but all signs point to yes.

It's part of a set of stories dealing with a bunch of mixed-race kids in the City of Mages that takes place about 80-90 years after the end of the Jarthen books. We might end up throwing them up on the Jarthen blog, actually, since there not really any Jarthen-related spoilers in them. Anyway, these stories, I don't really know what they count as. They're pretty squarely in the short story range in terms of length (only one gets past 10,000 words, which for me, is a rather big change of pace), but in terms of structure things get a bit murkier.

See, the same loose cast of characters shows up in story after story, so the characterization gets diffused and spread across them. And there are three, maybe four storylines that get picked up and developed across a few of the stories. I think there really is just the one section (incidentally, the last section) that could be counted as a standalone. There's a little bit of characterization that's borrowed from the other sections, but it's minor and you probably can read it in isolation and still catch everything just fine. And the plot of it is totally unintegrated with the rest of them. The themes are congruent, sure, but nothing that happens in it happens because of what's in the other stories. I...I think it's a real, honest-to-god short story.

But, having said that, I have no idea what the rest of them are. To call them short stories, when part of the point of that form of fiction is precisely to present a self-contained plot and develop characters within that limitations of that length, feels a little like cheating. But I really don't think it's a novel, either. There's no overarching, unified plot, just a few threads that intersect and reveal themselves over the course of a few sections. But, it's not like the stories build on each other in a clear, progressive way.

I don't know what the hell it is. It's 10 thingies plus a real live short story.¹

I still kind of like it, though. I still think, despite it's rather schizoid and somewhat unclassifiable form it's readable and interesting. I'm biased, though. I'm not one of those people who doesn't like the stuff they write, I tend to spend a few hours hear and there rereading sections of the books I've finished just for the sake of reading them. Which is maybe a little embarassing to admit. But still, point is, I think in it's weird flipper-baby (Dani, if you're reading this, that's a shout out for you) state it still kind of works.

But that one story, it works all by itself. I'm so proud.
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¹Ok, I'm also rather proud that it ended up with 11 sections instead of 10 or 12. I have a weird, slightly OCD thing with numbers, especially multiples of 5. But I also like multiples of 12, if multiples of 5 are unavailable for whatever reason. Like, I'll buy extra things in stores just because it feels wrong to only buy 3 items. Because 5 is just so awesome. So, I'd specifically planned this for 10 sections, but one of the characters kind of took on a life of his own and got his own section, so I revamped it to 12 sections, but then this other character totally skipped out of town on me and couldn't really get worked in and I just...settled on 11. It's a prime number, and usually me and prime numbers are like oil and water. But I'm alright with this. I think it's a good sign.

I swear it's the weirdest and most OCD tick I have. Well, that and compulsively writing things in my planner (this post is in my planner, for instance). Other than that, I've got a clean slate.