Essay – In Praise of the Short Novel

I wrote an essay called In Praise of the Short Novel for the Mechanics’ Institute Review:

I have been writing novels since 2001. I have many friends who are novelists, and I have come to the following conclusion: working people don’t have time to write long novels. They’re too busy putting food on the table or caring for their families to spend whole months fashioning a bewitching tapestry from interweaving plots or editing 200,000 words to a submittable standard. Working people write in the corners of their lives through sheer force of will. Their writing days are taken directly from their annual leave quotient and invariably come at a cost of not taking their children on day trips, not decorating the living room, not visiting distant relatives. They spend weekends in guilty joy, squeezing in moments here and there when they can put pen to paper. They scribble at the dining table while their kids are in bed and their partner is watching Game of Thrones, or in a café during their lunch hour, grabbing whatever opportunities they can to keep their narrative ticking over, eating with one hand, typing with the other.