Short and Sweet

It’s harder than you think

I had loads of time to write this column, which is why it’s so short. Writing long is easy. Writing short is where things get interesting.

Or as Mark Twain put it,

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

He also said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

I’d take the latter over the former – short and straight to the point.

I’m up for a good writing challenge, which is why I made it my mission to get a piece accepted in The New York Times’s “Tiny Love Story” column. A younger sibling of the “Modern Love” column, the “Tiny Love Story” submission guidelines are seemingly simple: “Tell us your love story. Just keep it really short. We’re looking for all the emotion that’s fit to print — in no more than 100 words.”

It took me a while to get a piece accepted – four tries to be exact. And voila!

Okay, “voila” implies it was simple. I could write (and did) an entire book on my love story with Dalia, so choosing 100 words was much trickier than I thought it would be.

Interested in writing a tiny love story of your own? I’m hosting a workshop March 1, 3:00-6:00 Eastern. Come with a photo that inspires you, spend some time writing in community, get thoughtful feedback, and leave with a polished piece. The workshop is part of The Writers’ Salon membership. If you’re not part of the Salon, there’s a small fee to participate. Respond to this email and I’ll get you the details!

See? I promised this one would be short and sweet.

With grit and grace,

Jessie