Salty Ink asks Valerie Compton:
You’re an accomplished short story writer, but this is a debut novel. What was the hardest part of upping a story’s wordcount to novel length?
It’s not a matter of upping the word count so much as solving the dilemmas of a story that is too complex to be resolved in small span of words. A novel does, and should, require depth and breadth and time to complete.
Good to hear someone say that.
A novel is a different creature. Just like a haiku is a different creature not just a short free verse. You don’t compress the best phrases of a page long poem into Cole’s notes short poem and call it haiku any more than a cowboy in a story makes it a western. Because it’s a long utterance doesn’t make it an essay. Because a written piece talks about a book doesn’t make it a review. Carry on…