I stopped writing short fiction early on - I was never really good at it, and I never liked the results. So I stopped trying to fit the material I was working with into these tidy little short fiction packages.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.
Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.
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.
Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.
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.
My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.
I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.
I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book.
I began writing fiction when I started running out of material in my own life.
For years, I felt I was a novelist, but now I know I can write short fiction.