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Once, I thought I had a novel, and it turned out it was only a short story. I wrote about 800 pages, but it ended up being a short story. And if it ever happens to me again, I Will Go Insane.

The short story can't really hold an interesting event. It can't hold a death or a war or a loss of great magnitude the way either a long story or a novel can.

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.

A short story can be packed with meaning and impact, with the concentrated density of a collapsed star, but should preferably also have a kind of elegant simplicity.

Stories of all lengths and depths come from different parts of the cave. For a novel, you must lay in mental, physical and spiritual provision as for a siege or for a time of hectic explosions, while a short story is, or can be, a steady, timed flame like the lighting of a blow lamp on a building site full of dry tinder.

I can't speak in too much detail about a book or story I'm working on because I find that it takes the energy out of my writing. When I begin to work, it's like a soda bottle that's been jostled before it's opened. There's a lot of pent up energy in there. I have to let it out slowly, carefully, so that I can turn it into a written work.

I often say flippantly that the short story is... shorter; you can be done with it more easily. It's much less of a commitment of time and energy than a big project like a novel or long nonfiction book.

I've never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own.