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.
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.
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.
Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.
I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it.
For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.
I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me.
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.
Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.
There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.
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.