while we're sitting here with Stephen
King author most recently of just after
sunset which is a collection of short
stories you write an introduction in the
book which talks about the fact that
short stories are sort of an art form
that not everybody and not a lot of
writers tackle anymore and that you
mentioned is something that you can sort
of lose your touch it's the kind of
thing where I think a lot of writers who
sell a fair number of copies and can
support themselves though with their
writing and we're very fortunate to be
able to do that have a tendency to think
of the novel and once you get your mind
set on the novel it's very easy to lose
whatever trick it is that involves
writing the short story there's a little
metaphor in the introduction where I
said that I could imagine some craftsman
from the Middle Ages forgetting how to
make Toledo steel and just looking sort
of sadly and a botched job and saying I
really used to remember how to make this
stuff and I think too that the novel is
a quagmire then a lot of younger writer
stumble into before they're they're
ready to go there so that there was a
piece and maybe PW or one of the
magazine's one of the magazines
associated with writing and publishing a
couple of weeks ago where their
columnist said there is some I know was
in the Boston Globe
where this lady said enumerated a number
of great short story writers who have
not written any short stories for a
while and you ask in that why and the
same reason is given time after time
well I'm writing a novel and so the
short story production dries up now for
me I started with short stories when I
was 18 so my first one when I was about
20 and produced pretty much nothing but
while I wrote a couple of novels but
they were not accepted and a lot of them
were so bad that I didn't even bother to
revise them but the short stories will
make money and I got very comfortable
with that format and I've never wanted
to leave it completely behind here's
some people who write who write short
stories talk about the fact that in
their mind you're there right they have
these massive novels written about these
characters but really what you see on
the page is just a sliver of a story
that's in their brain that they could
tell it they could write a novel about
it in most cases so now what what is
true and what happens to me a lot of
times is I will start out saying this
would be a terrific short story idea and
it balloons and becomes a novel misery
started as a short story and Gerald's
game started as a short story those were
things that I thought would be small and
grew to a size where they would be a
novel but on the other hand there's a
story and there're three stories in just
after sunset that are fairly long
they're in the 22 to 25 thousand word
length which would make them novelist as
one called a very tight place there's
another one called the gingerbread girl
that was done in Esquire and there is an
which has not been published before and
in fact n was submitted to the New
Yorker and I had a sense that they
thought about the story very seriously
and sort of wanted it for The New Yorker
but finally what they came back with was
this is just too long for the market so
that can present a problem there really
is that length of 22 to 25 thousand
words is kind of a Twilight Zone for
writers it's it's too short to be a
novel but it's too long to be a short
story and the real short stories that
that very talented short story writers
like Raymond Carver are able to write
this almost an art of minier
miniaturization that's involved it's a
it's a difficult it's a difficult craft
you