Novel versus Short Story

After having returned to writing some short stories while I took a hiatus between drafts of my novel I have to say, that for me, writing a novel is so much easier than writing a short story. Each short story requires so much commitment, understanding a new cast of characters, and caring about them. The novel, each time I sit down to write, is like returning home and being surrounded by people I’ve come to know well. I can easily produce two or three times the word output when working on the novel than on the stories I’ve written in the last month and a bit.