Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Writing Short Stories

from the introduction to Strange Pilgrims 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[He finds himself growing progressively more tired from writing short stories] In fact, I did not have the energy to finish them. Now I know why: The effort involved in writing a short story is an intense as beginning a novel. where everything must be defined in the first paragraph: structure, tone, style, rhythm, length, and sometimes even the personality of a character. All the rest is the pleasure of writing, the most intimate, solitary pleasure one can imagine, and if the rest of one's life is not spent correcting the novel, it is because the same iron rigor needed to begin the book is required to end it.  But a story has no beginning, no end; Either it works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, my own experience, and the experience of others, shows that most of the time it is better for one's health to start again in another direction, or toss the story in the wastebasket.  Someone, I don't remember who, made the point with this comforting phrase: "Good writers are appreciated more for what they tear up than for what they publish."

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