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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.

I don't want my readers slowed down by long passages of narrative.

I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me.

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.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

I'm a competent novelist. I'm getting better. But I'm a really good short story writer.

Making sentences is what I do. I mean, the story will come as I write.

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.

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.