Telling stories is one thing, and writing them down so they become a "short story" or a "novella" or a "novel" is another thing altogether. I don't think I fully realised that until just now, and I think that is an important step forward.
Writing for a living and being a story teller are quite distinct things.
One the one hand, there is the format; fashions decide how a story should be "presented" to the "target market" and that reflects not only in the language used, and the word count aspired to, but also in many other ways onto the story, re-shapes it, makes it into this other thing.
Being a story teller, one may free oneself from all of that.





