Hi Everyone,

I'm new here, and a relatively 'new' writer. I've only published a dozen or so pieces of poetry and short fiction.

My current short fiction writing is semi-autobiographical. I've assembled them in chronological order, and I am wondering if it is acceptable to write short stories based on my life, publish them as short stories, while simultaneously assembling the stories into a larger body of work, such as a novel.

In other words, is it unethical, or against etiquette, to take 30 published short stories and assemble them into a novel, with little editing?

Thanks and Cheers,
Paul
www.myspace.com/circusreject

Hi Paul, and welcome to WriteWords

No, it's not unethical or against etiquette, any decisions an Agent or publisher take on the matter will be purely commercial.
If you have already published the short stories that go to make up the novel, they may feel the material has already had too much public exposure (they prefer unpublished material). Conversly, if you can show that you already have a significant readership for the short stories, then that will help your submission.
At the end of the day all you can do is try it, and see if you can hook and Agent. If they like your writing then there shouldn't be a problem.


- NaomiM

Wot Naomi said - it's not a problem, and a publishing track record (provided it's in mags which the agent can google and find and tell have editorial standards and objectivity) is a plus.

But I do think an agent or editor reading that your stories have been 'assembled', would start reading the sample with a prejudice already against it, because it suggests that a) you don't realise that a novel is a very, very different thing from autobiographical short stories, in both form and content, and b) the novel is most unlike to sustain itself for the whole length, because even novels that didn't start as stories so often don't.

So, even if your novel does clear both a) and b) hurdles with consummate grace, I would either simply ignore the novel's origins in your covering letter, and give your publishing record in short fiction without going into their relationship, or be careful to make it very, very clear, that the novel is a novel: that the short stories and the novel have a common origin, but that's all: you're using some of the same material but in a wholly different way, and to a wholly different end.

Best of luck with it.

Emma

You might consider structuring it in a similar way to some of the blog-to-novel novels that have been published in recent years....although I can't think of any titles off hand except The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl by Belle de Jour.


- NaomiM

As Emma has said, it's not unethical, but I suspect you'll find that it doesn't quite work out a easily as that in reality.

Hi Paul
Following on from what Naomi said, I went to an interesting talk a while ago by the woman who wrote 'Wife in the North' (really sorry, can't remember her name just now!) which started off as an autobiographical blog. She described her genre as 'creative non-fiction' which I guess could be applied to your work too.
The main point she made was that the stories she had originally told in the blog were the substance of the book, but that she had had to alter chronology and change the emphasis she placed on certain events or characters in order to mould it into a narrative arc. She also said that something only becomes a novel (or a 'creative memoir' if it follows most of the conventions of a novel, ie narrative arc, believable, sympathetic characters, conflict and resolution etc.
In other words, I'm sure it is possible to turn your stories into a novel, but that it might require some work.
Also, if I remember rightly, it was her agent who worked with her and helped her turn the blog into a book so I assume that means an agent should be happy to read the stories with a view to doing something similar.
Good luck!
Claire

Scott Pack of the Friday Project was championing blog-to-novel books. Unfortunately The Friday Project was an early casualty of the recession, but his blog is worth checking out:

http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/

I know a good few blog-to-book authors, and I think the successful blog-to-book projects are the ones which were radically re-shaped. The less successful ones were those where they just bunged some posts on a page.

A propos whether an agent would help with the process, I think many of the big ones - Girl With a One Track Mind, Petite Francaise, and as you say, Claire, Wife in the North - were created by an agent going out and finding a blog when that was where the future of book deals seemed to lie, and helping the blogger to shape it. But that's not common. Unless you've got something incredibly special about you, so the concept is already highly saleable, and a blog which gets thousands and thousands of hits per day, I don't think an agent would be interested in doing the legwork: it's a lot of work, and they wouldn't be sure it would pay off in something they could sell. Certainly with short fiction, which they're much warier of and can't have built up a ready market as a blog might, I think if you approached them with something which wasn't the finished article, they'd just tell you to go away and finish it, if you see what I mean.

Emma

The Weekend section of the Daily Telegraph did a piece on blogging mums with large readerships who had been signed up by agents, but I could see it would take a lot of work to convert any of their blog posts into scenes in a novel.
I thumbed through Who Stole My Blackberry in Waterstones, which is pretty much a straight blog to book novel.