13,000 Words?

...and that's rounding up.

I can't believe my novella is this short. It certainly didn't seem that way when I was writing it. At this length, it barely qualifies as a novella. I'm fine with 20,000 words, which is the average length of my other books, but this is not good.

Yesterday I was high-fiving myself because it was finished. Only then did I take a look at my word count. 

The story is clearly missing something. I've given it some thought and its huge downfall seems to be that I've barely touched on the overall premise, which is buying a dilapidated motel and bringing it back to life. Somehow it morphed into a "love gone wrong" tale with the motel renovation as merely a backdrop. The only tasks my main character seems to undertake are scrubbing mold off the walls and a bit of painting. And those come across as afterthoughts. Pathetic, really.  

My quandary is that I really don't know what's involved in a project like this. Googling hasn't been very helpful, and I'm far from being a craftsman. It's plain, though, that I need to educate myself, because otherwise the whole theme is silly. At this point she could be engaged in some completely different enterprise and it would make no difference. 

My original idea sounded intriguing, open to possibilities, but I haven't exploited them. I'm disappointed in myself. Adding those details could theoretically make a dull story, but interweaving them with human interaction might flesh out the narrative in a meaningful way. 

I just can't allow myself to publish something this lean. Shoot, I was feeling so triumphant that I even settled on a title and started designing my cover. Now it's back to the slog. 

Writing never used to feel this way. I didn't overthink it, question myself. It might be a sign. I hope it's not, but it may be. Or it could just be burnout. I've been so prolific for so long, something had to break ~ or at least bend.

All I can do is keep trying.