Short Stories?

For a long time, I was sceptical about short stories because I haven’t read many short stories. I’ve read sketches, fairy-tales and Edgar Allan Poe. I considered it was mostly children’s literature and it didn’t even cross my mind that it could come with strong messages and cultural background and so on. I don’t even know how many short stories are there in Romanian literature. If there are, please give me some titles, I am very curious.

Everything changed in October since I started university. I have a course called “Case Studies in Short Fiction” and almost weekly we have to read something - I think I told you about this. From Kafka to Virginia Woolfe, to Indian authors, to Poe and other authors whose names I can’t remember, I read about feminism, identity, colonialism and post-colonialism, America, Great Britain, I discovered ideas, perspectives, experiences, realities. I started to love short stories.

Until now I was afraid that I would never be able to write a novel start to finish, that I would get stuck in a point in which I would think nothing happening makes sense anymore and I would just suddenly finish the story. But now, I figured out that I could write anytime and anyway short stories. It’s fascinating how many things you can tell in 5 pages. And then, if I start writing a short story and end up with 100 pages, I call it a novel and that’s it! This is how you overcome fears.