Hello, writers.
A year ago today I sat beside my sister’s hospital bed while a kind brain surgeon told us that he thought the lesion visible on her scan was “probably cancerous”. He did not tell us that he expected it would be type four. Anyway, he was correct.
So today my sister joins the roughly 50% of patients with this diagnosis who make it through the first year. We’re going out to dinner.
Thank you all for your kindness and support over the last year. It’s been wonderful.
Please do me a favor and read David Servan-Schreiber’s book Anti-Cancer. Or, if you don’t want to do that, please put turmeric and a little black pepper into everything you eat. (It’s great on ice-cream. No, not really.)
Anyway, enough of hijacking my own diary. Let’s talk about something else.
Let’s talk about how come I keep saying…
Try To Limit Yourself to 100 Words
Well, it has to do with effect. You want your writing to have as powerful an effect on the reader as possible. Take the unfortunately true tale above (72 words). I left out a lot. Oh, did I leave out a lot. But the essential is there.
We writers tend to be verbose. It’s hard to know when to stop. And we want to make sure that we’ve illustrated a point clearly, crystal clearly, and then illustrated it again to make sure the reader got it, and then again, and…
Which is good when you’re at the draft stage. That way on the rewrite, you can pick out which parts are most powerful, and cut out all the others that are getting in their way.
Obviously that doesn’t always work so well for the Tonight’s Challenge, because to post your response while people are still reading, you pretty much have to post something that is in draft stage.
But it’s something to think about for your own work.
Anyway. For tonight’s challenge let’s do it a little differently…
I think this is a particularly challenging challenge and I’m hoping people come up with some interesting stuff.
Here’s the situation:
George and Elma have been married for 38 years. One day, George or Elma (you decide) just can’t take it anymore. It’s over. It’s through.
or, if that’s too much of a downer, try this one:
George and Elma have been doing laundry at the same laundromat for over a year. They’ve never spoken. Then one day, their eyes meet across the sorting-and-folding table, and…
Pick one of the above. Write the scene. Try to limit yourself to 25 words.
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