Thursday, August 13, 2009

L.M. Montgomery on the Short Story

From a journal entry by L.M. Montgomery dated January 17, 1911:

...I tried to do a little at revising a short story this evening. Mr. Page wants to bring out a volume of short stories sometime and I am re-writing such of them as are worth including in such a volume. I think very few of them are. Most of my short stories were written as "pot-boilers." I should like to write some good short stories. I consider it a very high form of art. It is easier to write a good novel than a good short story...

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921 (edited by Mary Rubio & Elizabeth Waterston).

3 comments:

Suko said...

Interesting that she considered it more difficult to write a short story than to write a novel!

Hazra said...

I've heard that so many times...it's easier to write a short story than a novel. Maybe because the author has lesser space to pack in more elements of the story.

Dorte H said...

When you first read it, it sounds puzzling. Yet as a reader of crime fiction, I think it is much easier to find a good novel than a short story I really like.