In Brittni’s blog Are you feeling it? she brings up the point that an author can sort of feel if a there story is meant to be a short story or a novel. I think this can be true in any art form. A poet chooses if their poem is going to fit into a certain form, or into an open form style. Or, just like Brittni mentioned, sometimes I also have trouble trying to decide if a story is meant to be a play or a short story. I agree with Brittni that I think it comes down to what “feels” right. If a work is pulling in one direction but the artist tries to force it in another, it often gets bogged down in itself.
We have talked about in class how our authors’ illnesses often interfered with their work. I think that this might have not only contributed to why they wrote primarily short stories but I also must wonder if they sort of became “programmed” to think of stories in a shorter context. I am not saying that O’Connor and Porter would have been unable to write a novel, but just like I mainly see the stories I concoct as plays because theatre has been ingrained in me, I wonder if because they’re lives were constantly interrupted if their brains thought of short stories instead of novels. The “feeling” was right for them to do shorter works because they just instinctively knew that their writing might be interrupted.
It is really interesting to think about how political, social, and personal situations might affect the way an author comes up with a story.
Tags: Jillian Pagan, response, Short story