The Short Novella

(Or, The One Form of Literature in Which it is Entirely Impossible to be Published in Unless You Already Happen to be Incredibly Famous and Popular)

I've been doing some thinking about Mass Romantic over the past few days and have decided that it's best suited to being a short novella of around thirty thousand words. This decision is based largely on two issues:

• The story just doesn't seem to accommodate more than a few relatively uncomplicated subplots. It's a first-person narrative and, for the credibility of the plot, it's necessary for my main character to be almost entirely focused on one thing. Therefore, any subplots that take place have to concern the book's supporting cast. And, you know, his coworkers can only come to him with so many problems.
• I'm afraid the narrative style will become either stale or irritating for readers after a certain length of time. I know it'll turn off some right away, so I'd prefer not to alienate anyone else along the way.

The downside of this choice is that it's damn near impossible to get anything of this length published. Basically, your only hope lies in serialization, but most short story markets, especially ones paying on a per-word basis, just aren't interested in that anymore. And when a market does publish a serialization, it's almost always by an already established author.

So, I suppose I've consigned the story to the realm of the unpublishable. Nonetheless, I'll finish it off and I might post it on my website. Or, who knows, maybe I'll stumble across a market that's perfectly willing to publish serializations by complete unknowns. Then again, I might wake up tomorrow with some great idea that'll make my two issues irrelevant and I'll be back to writing a full-length novel.