But surely Teresa you must agree that its really important to write, and thus short stories might be a good idea if you want to complete something, or if you want to explore an idea, or you're enthusiasm for your main work is flagging.
To keep on writing and learning and improving is
the important thing.
And you are far, far more likely to do that working on a project you feel passionate about. So of course, yes, if an idea comes along that you love and believe can best be written at short story length, then work on that. Or if you feel that you've lost the spark on something old and you think that a change will freshen your mind up. But the important word there is
you. So long as the impulse genuinely comes from you, rather than because someone has told you that it's a better way to work.
What I was actually saying with this comment, if you read it in context, is that a lot of "aspiring novelists" are actually procrastinating and aren't, in all honesty, 100% serious about writing for publication. More power to them. However, one way to get into the whole publication process - writing an entire, self-contained story, finalising a manuscript, sending it out, dealing with rejections, dealing with publishers, editing, re-editing, seeing your name in print - is to write short stories.
But getting into the whole publication process can be a way of procrastinating, too, Locksmith. It's not writing. Ideally, it should come after your writing has developed for a long time, and you genuinely believe you are ready for publication, rather than because you think its a good way of getting critiques. Rejection letters rarely provide critiques, and when they do they are likely to be very, very brief. You have a better chance of learning how your writing improves by joining a good writers group.
And here is the thing: a lot of writers think that getting a few short stories published paves the way for their novels to be accepted, and that sounds logical on the face of it -- but in practice it is far more likely to go the other way. I know writers who have been selling their short stories to pro and semi-pro SFF magazines and anthologies for years, but when they start submitting novels to publishers, they don't sell them -- even though the editors know them, know how good they can be -- because each work has to sell itself, and some writers are better at writing at one length than they are at others. I know one writer, she wrote beautiful short fiction, stories so beautiful some of them they could make you cry, stories that have been nominated for major awards. And she could not write a successful novel, although she tried and tried. Eventually, she grew discouraged and stopped writing fiction at all. Which I think is a great loss to the field.
As for the thing I said about it working the other way around: magazines and anthologies need familiar names on the cover. Where do they generally get those names? By publishing writers who have made their names as novelists. They will, of course, include stories by other writers solely on their own merit. But in order to get those stories of greater merit into the hands of
readers, they have to include a few stories by Joe and Jane novelist. If Joe and Jane also write awesome short fiction, so much the better. But if Joe and Jane only write pretty good short fiction, and have a considerable following as novelists, they are still likely to get the nod. They may even receive invitations to submit to invitation-only anthologies.
But that's not a reason to write a novel first, although logically it would seem to be. The reason to write a novel is because the story you want to write
is a novel. Just as the reason to write a short story is because the story you want to write at that moment
is a short story.
It doesn't matter which path you take to success, or if the path branches. But for this kind of decision, go where your heart and your talent lead you, don't feel that you have to follow somebody else's trail.
