Small stories (instead of big ones)

 I was pulled into a discussion of "why not write a whole book, if you write so much anyway" a few days ago. With the whole of the internet brimming with guides on how to write your own 80 000 word epic and self publication on the rise, it does seem rather simple to write a novel.

I used to write something every day (I wrote about that here), although that's boiled down to writing something about twice a week. While I write less, the things I write have become more refined: I usually mull something over for a few minutes, jot the big picture down so I won't forget it, let it simmer for some hours and then write it down. With this, I'm still amounting something between five hundred and a thousand words a week.

The argument I was presented was that if I write that much anyway, wouldn't it be just as easy to write a full novel? Yes, I guess it would, was my answer. Except I don't want to. I like writing short stories specifically because of the way they work.

When I get an image in my head - maybe a phrase someone speaks or a short scene, or sometimes something bigger - it immediately spans to both temporal directions. I know the immediate reasons that have led to the situation and I see the brief causality of it. I know enough from around it to weave it to a story, and I know a lot more than I will ever tell. But I do not, at that moment, know nearly enough for a novel.

Short stories give multiple freedoms that are denied from a novel: it is hard to make a good novel where the style of telling changes every five pages. You can't (well, can, but I wouldn't) do too many literary hijinks with a novel: you can't test out ten different methods of contemporary storytelling. Short stories lay out possibilities to give brief glimpses into people and places that might otherwise be unaccessible. They're a different form of prose, compared to the novel.

Perhaps I could write a whole novel. Perhaps, one day, I will. But that's a completely different story.