I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be written as anything less than a trilogy.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to grow.