There’s no excuse for my being late with everything other
than the fact that I’ve been working on—what else? Microfiction.
It’s amazing to me, the tricks I’ve seen students go through in order to get their word counts UP. Two inch margins, abnormally
gigantic handwriting, etc. One wily teen even cut the bottom off his paper.
And now here I’ve been struggling to get my count down. I’ve
hit “Tools>Word Count” so many times, it seems to have become one motion. That working and shaping, weighing each word until the piece is down
to a magic number is an exercise that takes more discipline than most diets
I’ve been on.
But in the end, when prose stands there looking lean and
mean, I feel like a winner on "The Biggest Loser." And best of all is rearranging and finding the piece magically
under the word limit. It’s never more clear what a luxury words are.
Here to give me plenty of
practice in the endeavor is Grandma’s Goulash, where we are encouraged to use
the photo as inspiration for a story of 140 characters or 140 words.
The first is from two
weeks ago and the second, from last week. I hope Grandma or someone else will
tell me if I’m breaking rules by posting so late. The bonus word in the first
was “widget,” and in the second, “fragrant.”
Week 149:
Though Twiggy was grounded,
she wasn’t one to put down roots. While everyone else in the forest was
happy swaying softly, Twiggy wanted to chase widgets and dance. (139 characters.)
Week 150:
On a fragrant spring morning, Princess Anne happily signed the wedding
register. She knew the witch had given James an extra arm, but she always liked
her men hand-y. (138)
(I know this must be a famous illustration because I've seen it before. But I can never shake the impression that the guy with the red cape has his hands
laced on his stomach and a third protruding from his cape. Must just be me.)
What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the
effect the phrase created: laughter,
tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not
affecting the reader, what’s it doing there?
Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse. ~Isaac Asimov
