The Incalculable Value of Starting Small
The novel.
It is Mt. Everest for fiction writers, that singular, seemingly insurmountable challenge we all aspire to overcome. Tell me, who hasn’t sat at their keyboard, fingers at the ready, staring at a blank page and daydreaming about the moment when we can finally stand atop the world and scream, “THE END”? Because everyone knows that once you’ve been to the mountaintop, writing is no longer something you do. It’s who you are.
And for many who yearn for that blessed transmogrification, the novel is where they start. This is a terrible idea. Think about it. Would you attempt to summit Everest when five flights of stairs leaves you gasping? When you don’t know how to attach a harness or secure crampons or calculate how much oxygen you’ll need? I should certainly hope not. Why should writing a novel be any different?*
The simple fact of the matter is that you need to do your reps and build up your skillset before even setting foot on the base of that particular mountain. Short fiction is the entry point to this journey — literary base camp, as it were — and it’s the best place to start if you want to successfully ascend those breathless heights.
*Spoiler: no one dies if they write a bad novel. What a world that would be.
