The Incredible Shrinking Story

Required word counts were a struggle for me in high school and college because I wrote lean. No roundabout ways of saying something simple, no ruminations into the stratosphere. (I save those for blogs.) In wanting this fine focus for my writing, it's sometimes hard to go wide, see all the avenues open to me as writer. Luckily, in my conscious effort to submit at least one piece of poetry or fiction a month, my ability to brainstorm has improved.

I think it was Churchill who said, "Never, never, never give up." Never shortchange emotion in writing; never buy into too smooth a ride over rocky subjects. Too late to mail a story Saturday, forced to wait until tomorrow, I used this principle to get at the best emotion and simplest flow, cutting sixty-seven words from a seven-page ms. My commitment means I'm all over the place today: mentally taxed, too wired for sleep, bumping things left and right. Portrait of the writer getting back to reality.