Try This

Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none.

–Jules Renard–

When I did my undergraduate degree (English), I was first confronted with word counts. It wasn't until my first essay, a poetry compare-and-contrast, that I really understood what 2,500 words felt like. And that was hell. It's odd to think this way now, as I normally write that much during the course of a normal day (of a normal good day, I should say), but in the beginning, I used to dread it. Now things have changed immensely for me, so much so that thinking of writing a short story only 350 words long, such as the one that won this year's Bristol Prize, makes me feel queasy. I know I would give up without even attempting it. Can you deal with this amount of pressure? Can you write short, short fiction?

Write a 50-word short story featuring a writer who struggles to write.

Comments

[Sophie Playle]

Fun task! I'm still the other way around though: huge word counts make my head spin.

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Practice Makes Perfect

When she climbed through the mirror, she didn’t realise it was a one-way portal. Her prose and poetry looked like scribbles to the mirror-people. She screwed up the inky paper and started again, using a mirror to help her write backwards so that once again her stories could be read.

(50 words exactly, excluding title)

[Celise]

Don't know, but I'd like to try. I always found writing short stories hard to do while I was taking a Creative Writing course on Community college. I knew early on I wanted to write novel-length, well, novels and found it difficult to just stop at a designated word count. Like I said, though, I'd like to try it.