The Demands of a Novel

From a Paris Review interview with the great Amy Hempel:

INTERVIEWER

But why do you think the demands of a novel are greater than what you do? I think the short form is incredibly demanding.

HEMPEL

I do too. But I understand it. And I don’t understand the novel. The amount of stuff to hold in mind, the number of things you have to keep bringing forward over time I found entirely daunting. How do you keep everything a novel requires in your head? A friend of mine was about three-fourths done with her novel when she realized she had two characters named Bob in it. That’s the kind of thing that would happen to me.