Short stories

I have taken a few days off from the novel in order to dust up some stories which I wrote a while ago and now want to send out. I have never written many short stories because I'm not very interested in them. I hardly ever read short stories. For me they are simply too short. I love novels - the longer the better - precisely because they create complete and continuous fictional worlds. I want to lose myself in those worlds and stay in them forever. With a short story you're just beginning to understand the world of the story when it all evaporates. I've noticed that people don't like me expressing my dissatisfaction with the short story form. But that's just the way that it is. It's also nearly impossible, it seems, to get a short story published. I have several short stories which have been short listed for prizes but can I get them published? No, certainly not. But having said that, I've enjoyed working on one of my stories today. It is now much better than it was. It certainly should be. It's a story which has been re-drafted about fifty times over the last six years. But it's only now that I really feel that I'm beginning to understand what it's about. Isn't it dreadful, really, to have put so many hours work into something which will never be read? Or perhaps it's wonderful really? To work and work and work at something just for the sake of doing it. Yes, I think that I better decide that it's wonderful otherwise I'll be too depressed to carry on.