Irwin Shaw Quotes

You know, it's sort of common wisdom among New York publishers that short story collections don't make money.

The market for short stories is hard to break into, but a magazine editor isn't always looking for big names with which to sell his magazine - they're more willing to try stories by newcomers, if those tales are good.

I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.

I started out as a writer of fiction, but nobody wanted to publish my work as a young man. So I decided to put my interest in the narrative writing of biographies.

I started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.

The great pleasure for me in writing short stories is the fierce, elegant challenge.

I love writing shorter fiction.

My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.

Novels are my favorite to write and read. I do like writing personal essays, too. I'm not really a short story writer, nor do I tend to gravitate to them as a reader.

We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn't sell; but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it. So it's wonderful to be around people who love short fiction too - it's like hanging around with my tribe.

I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it.

On the other hand, now that I'm not dependent on fiction for my income, I've been writing more short stories despite the fact that there's no real paying market for short horror other than Cemetery Dance.

Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't often make up a writer's main body of work, and that's not because they don't see the market for it.

Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice.

Thus far, I've devoted my entire career to publishing genre short fiction, but I now look forward to applying that same level of curation to finding the best new novels and new authors.

I can't stand the short story form, which, after all, is a magazine form.

I would quite like to become a mainstream thriller writer, obviously, because I enjoy writing those stories, and it is the best way to secure your career.

I love Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore: such great short-story writers.

It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.

In the early 2000s, I started selling some short stories to horror markets. I joined the Horror Writers Association.

I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.

I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.