"If you’re a short story writer, people just want to know ‘So when are you going to write a novel?’ Musicians are lucky. They can write a song, and it’s a good song, just a few minutes long, and no one ever asks ‘So when are you going to write an opera?’"
| — | David Barr Kirtley |
7 comments:
Excellent point.
Yes, and I've heard that exact same question about a million times! :)
To play devil's advocate I would say that it is a false comparison. Folks may not ask when are you going to write an opera but they will say when's the album coming out, or what album is it on, or some other equivalent. Now whether an album of songs is more like a novel or a short story collection is another question but upon hearing a song the listener does ask for more.
That's true, Brian, but there are many song writers who aren't singers, so they only write one song at time and never expect them to be collected together.
How about visual artists? Their works are frequently stand alone...although larger works still tend to receive more attention than smaller ones.
Yes, and they can expand from painting to sculptures and other mediums without pressure.
From Keith over on FB
http://www.avclub.com/articles/why-george-saunders-or-anyone-else-can-write-whate,91578/
"...“The novel” is no longer the sole measuring stick of a writer’s quality in our time—not when books compete with film and television writers. Chen severely over-romanticizes the importance of a novel in the writer’s landscape today. For a specific subset of fiction writers, it’s the most important form, but by no means the only way to tell a story, or to prove they can produce."
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