The Long and Short of It

In trying to complete my collection of short stories, I was finishing up what I thought was a short short story. In my mind's eyes, a little story called Pinky and the Roaches was supposed to be no longer than eight pages. I thought it was something that I could whip up. In writing a character sketch of Pinky, I'm discovering this brand new world about her and where she comes from. I'm a novelist, so going off on tangents sometimes happens. I'm trying to tame it.

In an earlier sketch of Pinky, I made her out as an upper middle class Filipina from Manila. After thinking about my writing, I realized that I have a lot of Filipina characters from an upper middle class background. I decided to make her poverty stricken from a provincial part of the Philippines. The results have been...interesting.