I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.
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.
I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me.
Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.
There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.
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.
Having judged a few competitions, it's clear that novelists are often the laziest short story writers.
Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.
Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.