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There's a certain amount of world-building that I hold off on until I need it for the story. World building in advance isn't really my thing, maybe because I didn't grow up playing RPG's.

I am a huge fan of world-building. I love doing it in my own books, and I love reading it done well.

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

I like that it's challenging - that when I'm writing, I feel as if I'm pouring everything I have into the story until there's nothing left and I have to begin thinking about a new world and set of circumstances to research and explore.

I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

I often say flippantly that the short story is... shorter; you can be done with it more easily. It's much less of a commitment of time and energy than a big project like a novel or long nonfiction book.

Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.

I still write the occasional short story, and poked at a novel once, but it's just not what I want to do.

I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story.