I have just posted the third and final chapter of Reverend Rixton's discovery of bondage photography. It may look a premature end in some respects, but the tale is told and as always with me once I think a story is complete I see no reason to keep spinning out chapters.
I might do it if I am utterly in love with the main characters but in this case, they were okay if not special.
Closing after three chapters makes for a short(ish) story but there are always new avenues and ideas to explore. I hope to share of them with you soon, though right now I am about to embark on the good ship NaNoWriMo which I usually attempt to do each November, and have done now for 11 years.
For those of who who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a free-to-enter writing 'competition' (though without any prize but offering the satisfaction of completing the challenge) which requires an author to complete a 50,000 word novel inside the thirty days of November. Of course, 50,000 words would make for a very slim novel, but the National Novel Writing Month is a great exercise in focusing one's efforts and hitting a target. The target, incidentally, can be achieved with the pretty modest total of just 1,667 words a day and many participants hit the 50k mark inside ten days.
I think my best was inside eighteen days, and I went on that year to reach 70k words.
The question is then what you do with the effort when you have finished hammering the keyboard? There are a number of options, including self-publishing, offering it to an established publisher or even posting it here at SoL. There is also the point to be considered that in many ways NaNoWriMo is a 'first draft' and a lot of revision and editing goes on afterwards. But, if you can motivate oneself it is a good exercise for a writer to see if they can crack out a story under the pressure of time.
As I say, whatever I do may end up here, though not until December in all probability. As always, we shall see.