This is a rant, of sorts, triggered by my participation on a panel at the Minneapolis World Fantasy Convention of 2002. I wrote it soon after the event and filed it away. I don’t necessarily agree with everything the 2002 model thought. That was then and this…well, it isn’t. For instance, I like writing novels, too. I even like the idea of having a readership. But at the time this was where my head was at, for what little that might be worth.
The panel itself wasn’t bad, though it kept devolving into “Are short stories stepping stones to a novel career?” which rather annoyed me, but that’s what the audience was interested in, so you go with the flow. My bluntly-stated “If you want to write short stories, write short stories. If you want to write novels, write novels. Doing one isn’t going to teach you the other” wasn’t exactly popular.
Richard Parks 