Friday, February 11, 2022

Storyteller's Journey

When One Story Becomes Two

In the last six months I've been outlining what I thought would be another story for my Lindstrom Wintertime Tales collection. 

However, I had an experience that, thus far, I've not had as a writer.

I guess you'd call it a sort of "literary mitosis." The reason being is that somewhere along my process with the story, I suddenly realized it had grown and wanted to be a novel. It broke off from my original idea. But the experience didn't end there. Once I had a loose outline of the new novel, I realized that the original story was still intact, and quite different than the novel it had spawned. Thus, I had two fully formed story ideas. While this might seem like a great situation, it leaves me in the dilemma of what to do. Should I proceed with the new idea for a novel? Or should I return to my original plan and proceed with the short story destined to become a Lindstrom Wintertime Tale?

I think I'll take a break and muse on what this literary mitosis means!