"Desperate" for a novel

You know that I watch 3 TV shows. Well, I watch other show some of the time, but there are 3 that I tape to make sure that I get to see them. They are: Alias, Desperate Housewives, and Veronica Mars. (...OK, you caught me. I also tape Friends reruns, but I only watch the episodes if I haven't before, which almost never happens.)

So, I was on the BART today after lunch with my friend Brian and a visit to Creative Growth (http://www.creativegrowth.org, where I am going to start volunteering). (I was originally supposed to go to a talk at Berkeley on Housing and the Bay, but I just couldn't take another talk this week, and it turned out Carolyn wouldn't be available until 7 PM, and I didn't want to wait that long....) On the BART, there was a Datebook section of the Chronicle. I read the article on have Desperate Housewives is... not what it once was.

But, to make a short story long, the punchline, to me, was this line: "At times the series has played out as a less-than-intricate collection of short stories, rather than a novel that everyone seems to crave." (Goodman) In the 90s, my writing group talked about how the short story was en vogue along with short shorts. We thought this was great news, and now I think that's because short stories and short shorts are just easier. We didn't have to work so hard.

Of course, the irony here is that I don't like short stories all that much and I love novels. I can't take the emotional rollercoaster. If I am going to get all involved with a bunch of characters and their story, I want it to last at least a week. However, with my current system, I have managed to make one novel last like 6 months. Argh.