Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Short stories are wonderful and extremely challenging, and the joy of them, because it only takes me three or four months to write, I can take more risks with them. It's just less of your life invested.
There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.
For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.
I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.
I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it.
Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.
The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as like a tightrope walk - every sentence is a step along the rope, and you can so easily misplace your step and break your neck.
I love stories. But I don't distinguish so much between a short story and a novel. Personally, when I sit down to read a novel or a Chekhov story, I'm seeking the same thing: I'm seeking that same rich portrayal of life in words.
Novels are so much unrulier and more stressful to write. A short story can last two pages and then it's over, and that's kind of a relief. I really like balancing the two.
Short stories are often strong meat. Reading them, even listening to them, can be challenging, by which I do not mean hard work, simply that a certain amount of nerve and maturity is required.