Stories of all lengths and depths come from different parts of the cave. For a novel, you must lay in mental, physical and spiritual provision as for a siege or for a time of hectic explosions, while a short story is, or can be, a steady, timed flame like the lighting of a blow lamp on a building site full of dry tinder.
Interpretation
Writing requires careful preparation and understanding of different forms.
In this quote, Jane Gardam emphasizes the distinct approaches needed for crafting a novel versus a short story. She uses metaphors of a siege and a steady flame to illustrate that while a novel demands extensive mental and emotional investment akin to preparing for a challenging battle, a short story can be more focused and deliberate, akin to lighting a controlled flame in a construction setting. This highlights the diverse skills and preparations involved in different forms of storytelling.
In practice
An author discussed her creative process during a workshop.
I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.
I started to write as a child as soon as I could read, or even before, when my mother read me Beatrix Potter at bedtime. Writing seemed to me to be the only sensible way to live and be happy.
I was nearly 40 when I started. I had no fear that I wasn't going to write. I knew it was just delayed. Then, my goodness, I never stopped.
In modern novels, there is no one I want to copy. My style 'is a poor thing, but it is my own.'
The theater requires an essential gullibility that you can't get through life without having. If all you can feel is skepticism-well , you meet people like this. Run away from them. They're not good people.
I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.
The things that affect you most deeply - the things that will destroy you if you don't sing about them - are the things that you often end up singing about. It's really just about saying those things that everybody thinks but no one will say and making a connection by uncovering these diamonds that are inside of all of us that no one wants to tell each other about.
I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life.
Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
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