A recurrent thought after reading a novel: “This would be better if it were shorter”. Of course, I’m biased, since as a writer I prefer short stories to novels. And beyond the personal, there are cultural reasons for my distaste for doorstoppers, as contemporary Latin American literature — which I tend to read the most — frequently errs on the side of the lower page count.
This might sound like an apologia for brevity, which would be on brand for me, but my point here is another: Do writers think about length as they think about other elements of their craft? My totally unsubstantiated, albeit unflinching, belief is that most don't, and instead just do what they are expected to do. I know I’ve been guilty of involuntary page thriftiness when writing in Spanish and word count inflation when writing in English. Since that’s the language I’m using for this piece, let me give you an example from my Anglophone misadventures: the manuscript of what later became Shitstorm, and what I learned after cutting it to a quarter of its length.