Rami Ungar The Writer

Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I can be a real idiot sometimes.

So, back in December, I posted about my plans for 2025 in terms of what I want to accomplish with my writing (you can read that post here). What I didn’t mention was that I had no plans to write anything longer than a novelette. I’d edit the novellas and novels I’d already written, like The Shape of Evil and the four I hope to shop around when I’ve finished editing them. But I wouldn’t work on anything longer. Just short stories and novelettes until those stories were finished and edited and published. And only after I’d gotten back to my mummy novel, Crawler, and finished the first draft of that.

(For those of you who are unaware, the Horror Writers Association defines a short story as 1,000-7,500 words, a novelette as 7,500-17,500, a novella as 17,500-40,000, and a novel is 40,000 words and up.)

So, with my plan in place, I started on a witchy Halloween story that I thought would be maybe a long novelette at most.

And that story ended up going up to 20,000 words! And it’s not even done!

Now, by that point, I had been working on the story since before New Year’s, and I was so frustrated by how busy my life has been, so I completely forgot about my promise to myself and just forged on ahead for a while. But then I found myself just hesitating, not wanting to get further when I knew it could take me another month or two, given my current life.

That was when I remembered my promise to myself. And I slapped myself in the head for not keeping it!

So, the witchy Halloween story is now on hold until I’ve finished Crawler. In the meantime, I’m going to work on something I know will be shorter.* After that, the sensitivity readers should both be done with The Shape of Evil (one’s already sent me their notes), so I’ll probably give that one more round of edits.

After that? Probably another guaranteed short story. We’ll see.

But for now, I should head to bed. I’ve got the Akron Book Fest tomorrow, and I’ll need all the energy I can get.

After I get back home, however, I’ve got a great scary story idea to look forward to writing. And did I mention the story was inspired by Hamilton?

Anyway, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!

*Then again, I thought the witchy Halloween story would be short. So who knows?!