you know i love it when you talk dirty to me
I confess I had to be converted to short stories, and now I'm quite the evangelist. At one point I did see myself as a novelist (even though I hadn't written one) as distinct from a writer who also happens to do shorts. And I do know a couple of other writers who have zero interest in shorts. Each to their own, of course, but I think some (but by no means all) writers who get defensive about not writing short stories do so because they equate shorts with the old style view of paying your dues before getting a seat at the big table. They want to bypass that and go straight to the best-seller lists.
In my experiece, those writers who do take the short form seriously have a better work ethic. But that's a generalisation, as I know at least one author who just doesn't do shorts yet has published a couple of novels - though he is a journalist, so regularly writes short pieces for the press, so perhaps that performs the same function?
Love a good short story! Although I'm usually too long winded to stop unless I'm at least 100 pages. I never know where to stop.
I confess that I don't really like short stories or writing them, either. I am making myself read more (thank goodness for ezines!) and writing more (if you call my pace 'more') but I don't really enjoy it. I think you are right in saying you shorten the learning curve, and I have a tendency to wax on tangentially in a story, so I hope to get better at avoiding that habit via learning to write shorts. But the thing about short stories is that I like more depth, more characters, more complexity and more more more worldbuilding. I love those dense fantasy series books (Like Michelle Sagara West's Sword series, Robert Jordon, LOTR, etc.) that are complicated and even difficult to follow.
I think it boils down to what one likes to write. Neither is better.
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