WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

A friend of my friend told him, and then he told me, that all my other friends have wanted to know this trivia for a very long time. I think I have that right. Nevertheless, read on friends, because I have it here for you…..

 From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

The gods and goddesses of literature, who decide such things, maintain that my book, GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS, A Spiritual Odyssey, is not a novel.

“What do you mean it isn’t a novel?!” I shoot back. “It’s chock full of narrative that transports readers to a fictional world. It sends my protagonist on a spiritual journey in which he encounters a series of obstacles he overcomes. Surely my book is a novel!” I insist.

“Your GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS is too short to be a novel!” the sentry goddess steps forward and informs me, a self-righteous lift to her upper lip that galls me to no end. “It has to comprise 40,000+ words to be a novel. Your book, which comes in at just under 39,000 words, qualifies as a novella. Not to be finicky about it, but strictly speaking any piece of fiction that falls between 17,000 and 40,000 words is a novella. If you want it to be a novel, you must go back in and add 1,000 words or more to it.”

It irks me to give in to this arrogant custodian of all things literary, but I swallow my annoyance and revisit my manuscript to find more words to insert in it. But no words come! It satisfies me just as it is. I suppose I must be content that my GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS is a novella.

This exchange with the arrogant sovereign of the literary world sets me on a quest to reacquaint myself with the parameters of other types of works of fiction. In my research on the subject I stumble upon an obscure thing called a “novelette,” described as a work of fiction of 7,500 to 17,000 words in length. You will never guess what I found to be famous works of this type: Edgar Allan Poe’s THE TELL-TALE HEART and his THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, as well as Franz Kafka’s THE METAMORPHOSIS. Who knew?!

Okay, so now I’m dying to discover the next category in this demanding hierarchy of literary regulations, and you guessed it—number four on the list is short story, and it has to be between 3,500 and 7,500 words to gain and maintain its much-loved position in the pecking order of literature.

Further down the list, flash fiction, otherwise known as short-short story, or micro-fiction, or postcard fiction, requires only 53 – 1,000 words. A number of my blog posts qualify for this classification.

What form a piece of fiction between 1,000 to 3,500 words takes, I have yet to discover. Most of my stories of historical fiction that I have posted on my blog, and will continue to do so, fall into this unspecified classification of fiction. The goddess of literature refuses to tell me its name. If anyone out there can clear-up this mystery for me, I implore you to do so. Otherwise, it will hang on as another bit of trivia among an over-abundance of them that drills into my brain night and day.©

                   Image: THE SENTRY, acrylic painting by Linda Lee Greene

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 ON SALE NOW!

Multi-award-winning author Linda Lee Greene’s

GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS

A Spiritual Odyssey

Readers were introduced to American Nicholas Plato in multi-award-winning author Linda Lee Greene’s A CHANCE AT THE MOON, which was published in 2019 and is available for purchase at https://tinyurl.com/3dc75u6p. Greene takes readers on another adventure of Nicholas’ whirlwind life in her GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS, A Spiritual Odyssey. In this sequel, Nicholas shows up in Sydney, Australia. The principle plotline unfolds as on one Saturday of sightseeing he gets lost in Australia’s forbidding yet alluring outback, and there he happens upon a pintsized hut on a lonely plot littered with hundreds of clay pots of every size and description. Driven by a deathly thirst, he stops. A strange little brown man materializes out of nowhere and introduces himself merely as ‘Potter’ and welcomes Nicholas to his ‘Garden of the Spirits of the Pots.’ Although Nicholas has never laid eyes on Potter, the man seems to have expected Nicholas at his bizarre habitation and displays knowledge about him that nobody has any right to possess. Just who is this mysterious Aboriginal potter?

Although they are as mismatched as two persons can be, a strangely inevitable friendship takes hold between them. It is a relationship that can only be directed by an unseen hand bent on setting Nicholas on a mystifying voyage of self-discovery and Potter on revelations of universal certainties.

A blend of visionary and inspirational fiction with a touch of romance, this is a tale of Nicholas’ journey into parts unknown, both within his adopted home and himself, a quest that in the end leads him to his true purpose for living.

It is available in eBook and/or paperback. Just click the following link/URL and it will take you straight to the page on Amazon on which you can purchase it. https://www.amazon.com/GARDEN-SPIRITS-POTS-SPIRITUAL-ODYSSEY-ebook/dp/B09JM7YL6F/

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