Triona McSweeney asked Maria V. Snyder:

Hi Maria, I absolutely love your books. If you've time, I have a quick question. I'm an aspiring fantasy/sci-fi writer. I've written a few unpolished novellas/novels and I'm returning to writing after a few years. I'm just wondering if you'd recommend starting back writing with short stories or novels? My goal is to hopefully become a novel writer but I want to master the craft of writing. Any advice would be great!

Maria V. Snyder Hello Triona! Thanks for the love :) As for your question, I found writing novels to be easier than writing short stories. When I first started out, I thought like you did, that I needed to start small and write short. None of my early stories have sold and every time I brought a short story to my writing critique group they would say, "this isn't a short story, there's too much going on, you should make it into a novel." Sigh I couldn't write that small slice of life that is needed for a really good short story (not until after a few novels - even now it's hard for me to keep it under 7K :)

If you want to write novels, then write novels - why spend all that time working on shorts when that's not your goal? :) And, I hate to break this to you, but I don't think anyone can "master the craft of writing" ;) I certainly haven't - it's a process and learning and improving are an ongoing effort. And that's what is key - the effort. All right, I'm stepping off my soap box....now :)

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