It is not necessary that your author write novels or similar genres.  You may be reading poems, essays, speeches, short stories, or plays.  If so, your first task is to divide your reading up into approximately 100 page sections.  Then, write a proposal, contracting with me what you will read for each stage of the author study project. 

Special conditions will also apply when  you're writing your literary analysis papers.  As you read these shorter genres, try to categorize them on some basis.  For instance, if you chose Emily Dickinson, you could probably group her poems on the basis of death, nature, and solitude.  Then you could discuss each group of poems on various points in your body paragraphs of your literary analysis.

 Typically students who choose shorter genres spend at least one day meeting with me and agreeing on categories and their thesis statement.  We will expand or limit it to whatever seems fair to the other people in your class.