This is not a political blog so I will leave it at two words: four years.
As I move farther away from writing short stories, ideas appear before me like formerly beloved children who have now been consigned to orphandom. Yesterday two ideas popped up unbidden. One- a woman told me the story of how she was being stalked by a woman who is incorrectly convinced she is having an affair with her husband. Two-a former colleague's daughter has had him institutionalized after the death of his wife and is selling everything of his she can get her hands on while he waits for a psychiatric hearing.
Only today, a woman on the bus was dressed entitely in beige. Now this would not be that interesting if she had on some designer beige outfit. But she had on beige jeans, running shoes, gloves, hat, coat, purse, bookbag and scarf. Not another color in sight and no patterns either. Why beige?
It's easy to say file these ideas away for when the novel is complete, but I lose the voices. Does that make sense to anyone out there?
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I think you'll find that the more you write novels the more you find yourself integrating those little ideas into your manuscript to give it depth.
Now that's something I have not been yet able to do successfully. The voices are different. When I tried to do it with a back section, it stuck out like a sore thumb. But if I can do it, it would sure make things easier.
I do the same thing. I find that I can't just focus on the novel. I'll go crazy. I mean, crazier than I am now. If I don't break up the monotony with something else I get pissed off and resentful of the novel, which I already hate, so that tells you something right there.
I think you can approach it a few different ways and not lose them. The first is what Bryon suggests. I think some of those ideas will make their way into your novels.
Another approach is to take a break from the novel and write the short. That works for me because I don't spend more than a few days on any short piece as it is.
If that doesn't work for you, try writing a snippet of it. A first line, a rough sketch, but something that has some of the voice you're thinking of. Maybe a piece of dialog or a description that jumps out at you when you're thinking of it.
File it for later. Yes, you'll probably forget about it for a while, but when you go back to it you'll have some of what got you interested in the story to begin with without having dedicated too much time to it.
It comes down to priorities and making choices. We can't tell all the stories we want to. There's simply not enough time. So we have to make tough choices.
Oh, Stephen. To think you can write a short in a few days. I never get by on less than a few weeks.
The snippet idea is another good one. That way, I may find the voice is not so dissimilar to the one in my novel.
I do know what you mean about losing the voice if you file it away. That has happened to me a few times.
One thing I am getting better at, though, is combining old ideas with new. Or even old with old. Sometimes something will come up that reminds me of an old story. So I don't mind too much about all those "starters" I have lying around.
The voice seems so immediate and irretrievable to me. Maybe a tape recorder?
Tape recorder and snippet are both good ideas, but let me suggest another possibility. File away the idea and trust that whatever voice you come up with to deal with the story situation in the future (that place where we keep the extra time we'll need for all the projects of our teeming brains...) will be an equally good or perhaps even better one.
Last was a long sentence. Did it make sense?
It did, or it would have thirty years ago when I had a better memory. I do write these ideas down but find the voice is usually gone, if not the idea. Sometimes I can tap into it, but not usually. I guess the smaller good of a short story will be sacrificed for the larger good of a novel (if that actually happens).
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