>
> That sounds like good advice, but I have to
>wonder how applicable it is. If someone's a
>naturally gifted novelist and can snap one out
>without writing anything before, it's a very rare
>exception. Writing isn't so much a gift as it is
>hard work, and short stories is a good (note the
>"a" rather than a "the") way of developing the
>craft. However...

I tried to respond to this before Thanksgiving, but the message forum was being a pain and so now I have to try again.

I hang out on rec.arts.sf.composition quite a bit, and there is always lots of discussion about the "write short stories first" advice that is always given to writers of SF/F. The prevailing wisdom is that in general terms it is good advice, but it can't be taken as gospel truth and shouldn't be followed to the detriment of the writer. There are two or three published novelists who post to the group routinely who admit to never having published a short story, or even having written one they considered to be of publishable quality. Many of them slaved over the short stories for years, doggedly following the "write short stories first" maxim to the letter, and not getting anywhere.

I agree that writing is mostly hard work. As Edison used to say, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." That holds true for just about any endeavor worth persuing in life. But the simple fact is that short stories and novels are two entirely different beasts, and some of the worlds best novelists couldn't write a short story to save their lives, and vice-versa.

So that's why I say to write to your natural length. It's all work anyway--very little of the writing you're bound to do in your life will come easily from beginning to end--so if its all going to be work, why not choose the line of work that best suites you? If jumping right in to something as long as a novel scares you, try a short story first. Or you can do like I did with my first novel. I took a short story that I had already written and re-wrote it. I didn't even know I was writing a novel until I finished.

You probably won't know what your natural length is until you go ahead and write something. I'm just starting to realize that my "natural length" may fall into those dreaded "in-between" categories of novelette and novella (between short story and novel length.) I say "dreaded" because in the world of SF/F writing, works of that length are almost unpublishable. The magazines won't touch them because they're too long, and the book publishers won't touch them because they're too short. Nevertherless, I am constantly finding myself working ideas over in my head that are obviously too big for a short story and yet don't hold enough meat for a whole novel. So now my problem is to decide whether to write what I want and say to hell with everyone else, or try to conform to publishing standards by chopping down the ideas to short story length or adding material to make them novels.

There is, of course, one other avenue that I'm just beginning to explore, and that's writing screenplays. A good movie is closer akin to a novella than a novel or short story(as most novels cover too much ground for a two-hour film, and most short stories cover too little) and so this may be the perfect medium to tell the stories I want to tell. And yet, the screenplay is sometimes an even more complicated beast than either the short story or the novel, since it must adapt to the visual medium of the screen while still telling a cogent and intriguing story. So we'll see.