From Short Story to First Novel: a guest post by Malena Watrous
Last Thursday, I reviewed If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous. I loved the book, and I've read quite a few interviews with her on blogs, in old media and the one included in the back of the book itself. With most of my questions having already been asked and answered, I asked Malena if she would be willing to write a guest post for this blog instead of doing another interview. I mentioned I was interested in the process of how she turned a short story into a novel, and she quickly and graciously agreed to tell that part of the story here. One of the questions that I have been asked since my novel came out is what I learned from the process of writing it, and what I would do differently the next time around. The short answer is that I wouldn’t want to turn a short story into a novel ever again. I wrote “Gomi” (garbage), the story that became If You Follow Me , when I was a student in Marilynne Robinson’s workshop at the University of Iowa. ...