David, if you're responding to your internal editor, I bet he can hear you just fine.

I don’t know who I’m responding to, actually.

Maybe keep telling yourself that they're not novelettes; they're partially completed novels.

That’s what I think the Fates are really telling me: quit trying to present the courses a la carte; just serve the damned meal.

On the other hand, if you have parts of a novel you can submit as novelettes, that's a good thing, obviously. Maybe it's more a matter of redefining your novelettes but not telling the editors that's what you've done.

I’m not sure it is a good thing, if it means I spend four months polishing each 10,000-word chunk.

I admit I’d probably feel differently if I wasn’t sitting on two or three novelettes that have made the rounds of every pro market with a high enough word limit.

Okay, how about this:

Wait till the novel's written, then polish the extractable bits and submit those as novelettes while you're waiting to hear back from the book publishers.

In any case, even though you haven't been able to place your novelettes, you've made very solid progress on significant portions of your novel.

Now that sounds like a plan. Thanks!