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A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

Considerations of plot do a great deal of heavy lifting when it comes to long-form narrative - readers will overlook the most ham-fisted prose if only a writer can make them long to know what happens next.

When you're writing a sketch, it has to be surrounded by a situation. It can't just be out of the air.

A sketch is just a mini movie.

When you make illustrations, you're supposed to have a subtext; you're not just communicating words - you're actually adding another story altogether.

Writing sketches, you're also learning about a journey and characters, and you translate that to bigger things.

With short stories, you can always see the whole, but it's just so hard to get everything you want into that small form.

Once I have the story in my head, I write it down. The illustrations usually come last.

I'm mostly drawn to narratives that are difficult for me to visualize.

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.