So, this winter I took a short story writing class, that Music and Books in Ayr were offering. It was something that my friend who writes children’s books was also signed up to take. I always joked that I would need to lose words, and that she would need to find some.

The small class began in the back of their bookstore. It was a great group and our instructor Suzanne was very knowledgeable. She started us off with little exercises that had us making up a story from a photo, within a ten minute window. You’ve heard of speed dating? Well, this was speed creating.

For someone who loves her dialogue, this wasn’t easy. I had to efficiently pick the very best words to get my point of view across, under time restraints.

I had to release my want to write the wonderfully wordy stories like you would hear in any of Amy Sherman Palladino’s brilliantly scribed television shows, like Gilmore Girls, and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel for examples.

So, with that in mind, a five thousand word story was to be written, and if we are to compare it to my book To Be True, I would have to lose 62,000 words.

Suffice it to say that what I thought would be a piece of cake, turned into humble pie, and I was eating it.

I reworked, and reworked my story until I got it finished up in under 5000 words.

I realized there and then that my short story had been far more difficult to write than my novel had been. Short and sweet, turned out to be quite the feat, but what a valued experience it was. My next book, The Truth has Teeth, sprang from that short story, though I must confess that my fondness for good conversational chit chat added about another fifty-five thousand words.

What can I say…apparently a lot.