Exactly. I fought that idea for a long time because I prefer writing novels.
“Make more mistakes faster. You’ll learn quicker.” Eric finally got that through my head, that a short story contains everything a novel does and takes a week (to a month) to write. Twelve to 52 opportunities to learn how to tell a story, beginning, middle and end. That many chances to develop characters, play with dialogue, theme, plot, all of it.
It can take that entire year to learn from a novel’s mistakes, and you’re only learning from *one set* of mistakes.