8th July 2016 | for Creatives | Colum McCann, short stories, novel writing, writing |
"The short story is a sprint, and the novel is a long-haul marathon composed of numerous internal sprints."
"I think a story, when properly told, finds its own natural length. If you try to extend it too much, it just stretches and begins to bore, and if you try to compress it too much, it just fractures. So you just hope that you can find the right rhythm. It's a musical thing. You feel it out, you cut back, you switch things around—until it feels entirely natural. A story should feel easy when of course it's far from easy." (artist)
"Writers must produce. And produce. And produce. ABW: 'Always Be Writing.' ... One book a year? Psssh. No. Focus only on novels? Not likely. Writers are no longer as free to work in a single sphere of writerly existence. Get used to writing short, long, script, game, non-fiction, etc."
"I spent a lot of time worrying that I wasn't being a writer in the correct way. I don't write every day—I write when I'm burning with an idea. I don't really want to write novels—I prefer stories. These are temperamental issues."
"Sometimes you might think of TV as writing a long novel, but it's kind of not. You have to do a very strong short story to start with."
"I wasted a lot of years writing short stories when I clearly should have been writing novels because that’s what I loved."
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