Ah, the literary world continues to cause smirks of amazement at the silliness that it spits out. The architecture of formalisms often seems to be more enticing, even addictive, to many than lucid expressions of heartfelt honesty. After all, in a world where one’s life will soon cease, as sure as shit, it becomes a matter of some importance whether one’s writing conforms to the guidelines of the righteous scholars, or to the imperatives of impending doom.
There really isn’t all that much time to fuck around with bullshit.
I’ve written 4 novels; but of course they aren’t really novels are they?
Why?
Because they are all between 40,000 and 50,000 words. Therefore, they are ‘novelettes’, or ‘novellas’, and not novels at all.
Excuse the break; I had to go to the loo to puke.
Things get more and more ridiculous and now we have ever finer gradations of category, classifying each piece of writing so that we can chuck it into yet another pigeonhole.
There’s a contest (good god, not another!) in my area for best piece of ‘flash fiction’. Submit your story, not more than 150 words, by January 15. Winners will be announced. Payment is not specified.
Well, ‘flash fiction’ is just another bit of crappy marketing strategy promoting as something ‘new’ that which has existed for a long time. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.
So here we are, for prose writing:
Flash fiction – 150 words or less.
Short short story – 150-1000 words
Short story – 1000-10,000 words
Long short story – 10,000-20,000 words
Novelette – 20,000-40,000 words
Novella – 40,000-60,000 words
Novel – 60,000- 150,000 words
Piece of Crap – 150,000-300,000 words
Very Large Piece of Crap – 300,000- infinite number of words
Ah! It’s all clear to me now! The beauty of literature…
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That's what I used to say till all these assholes who are trying to scam me popped up. Die motherfuckers, die.