Last week Edmund Schubert discussed whether it’s better for new writers to start out with short stories or with novels. While I agree with his answer–it doesn’t matter–I sometimes wish I’d started out with short stories.
Of course I couldn’t have started with stories, because at the time I read mostly novels, didn’t like short stories much, and all my ideas were for novels. (And when I was an absolute beginner, I didn’t want to “write”, I wanted to write “this one book.”) So I didn’t have a lot of choice, and I don’t regret diving into novels first at all.
But in the past year or so that I’ve been writing more short stories, it feels like I’m improving faster. [1] Short stories are, well, short: I can write a lot of them in the time a novel takes me. I can experiment with different genres, characters, settings more frequently. My critique group can read and comment on the whole thing in one session. I can spend less time fixing the plot and more time fixing everything else.
At the very least I’ve had a lot more practice writing endings.
What did you other writers start out with?
[1] Not that I have a twin locked up in the basement writing novels, so there’s no control group.