From the foreword to Le Guin’s The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. I love the way she talks with such reverence about writing.
“The relation between short story and novel, inside the writer’s head, is interesting. ‘Semley’s Necklace,’ though a complete story in itself, was the germ of a novel. I had done with Semley when I finished it, but there was a minor character, a mere by-stander, who did not sink back obediently into obscurity when the story was done, but who kept nagging me. ‘Write my story,’ he said. ‘I’m Rocannon. I want to explore my world. . . .’ So I obeyed him. You really can’t argue with these people.
‘Winter’s King’ was another such germinal story, and so were ‘The Word of Unbinding’ and ‘The Rule of Names,’ though all of them gave me the place, rather than the person, for the novels to come. The last story in the book is not a germinal but an autumnal one. It came after the novel, a final gift, received with thanksgiving.”
Justin Williams 