I always was a "novelist"-- the dictates of traditional print publishing meant we kind of had to aim for between 200-400 pages, and that led to a particular type of story.

Now the length can be variable, and I'm kind of excited about the idea of creating "clusters" of shorter related stories-- about the same characters or the same place, but not necessarily in chronological sequence. The opening of the length format is inspiring me to do things like create a small lake town and write a short story about different residents... not (at this point) a unified whole, but more of a story collage. I want to have the people interact in each other's stories, like Mrs. Collier was Detective Nicolosi's science teacher and gave him a D rather than an F in chemistry so that he could graduate from high school, and so he feels like he owes her. And Lisa was the babysitter for Mary's little girl ten years ago, and goes to her for advice.

I just am afraid the conflicts will be sort of trivial because this is a small town and nothing really terrible happens. But what the heck. The good thing about a short story is if you screw it up, you haven't wasted a year on it first!

What about you? Are you trying something different because of the new options available these days?