100

Tea and inspiration at Lee Rosy's Nottingham
(pic from www.leerosyshop.com)

Had another great evening with Writing at Rosy's last Wednesday - it's great mix of writers, which means there's always something surprising to discover when you listen to one another's work, especially when you're all working to the same brief.

This month's homework was to write a story that was exactly 100 words long.  It's not a lot, and it was interesting to see who wrote up to the magic number and who edited down to it (raises hand).

Editing is always tough to start with - I think I can't lose a word; then there's a moment when I understand what's really at the core of the tale.  After that, there's smoke coming off the backspace key.

I checked the wordcount - 99.

It should be the easiest thing - just add one more word somewhere in the text to complete the task.  But the effort I put into finding which words were the essence of the story meant chucking in an adjective willy-nilly made a mockery of the work.  I got there, in the end; but it took me as long to add one word as it did to take out fifty.

It reminded me about the importance individual words can have in the text - how every word should be working as hard as it can to drive the story forwards, to get us closer to our characters.  A great reminder for any writer - and the gingerbread and orange tea at Lee Rosy's was very nice, too.