I’ve been writing some really short stories lately, something I’d never done before. I think the shortest story I’d ever written had around seven thousand words. I have Michael Brookes, the author of several successful books, to thank for my even trying. He runs a monthly five-hundred-word-or-less contest on his blog, The Cult of Me, and I decided to enter the one for July. Well, I was hooked so I also entered for August, September, and his latest one for October. So far, I’ve not won one, but I have truly enjoyed the challenge of writing such a short story as I tend to sometimes get wordy when I write, and I found that restricting the number of words I can use makes me try and think of a different approach, another way to put the words together.
(Michael did an author interview on me a few months ago, which, for some reason, I neglected to mention before *shaking my head*. It can be found here)
Michael also writes extremely (at least I think it’s extreme!) short stories called “drabbles”, which are full stories of exactly one hundred words. Heh. I have not tried writing any of those! Or at least not yet. As soon as I work up my nerve I think I’ll give it a whirl.
