The Soul of Wit is to not use too many words
(case in point)
Hi.
Everything I wrote before smartphones were invented is now too long.
Novels were 125,000 words.
Short stories were 8500 words.
Flash fiction was 2000 words.
Letters to my mom or my friends were four pages front and back.
I go on too long.
So.
That’s it for this week.
Writing News:
Wrote a poem called All Signs Indicate. It’s on Medium. It could probably be shorter.
Started a long post about the documentary You Can Call Me Bill and the subsequent talkback pitting Shatner against Neil deGrasse Tyson. The documentary was perfect. 90 minutes of Shatner talking personal philosophy with short clips of his well-known scenes running in the background to humorous/venerating effect. I think it was intended to be a panel where Neil deGrasse Tyson was moderating William Shatner (who is 98) and the director of the film, Alexandre O. Philippe. Instead Neil talked and then Bill talked him down — and then started to school him, unbidden, on acting techniques….
About an hour after Bill took over his own interview, he began to include Alexandre. The whole thing was a bloodbath. But at the end of it, if you can imagine a burn turning into a compliment, deGrasse Tyson was told he might still not have peaked.
Of course William Shatner’s actual words were: “I admire you. I admire that brain of yours which is throbbing to expose itself. You are a remarkable man.”
So you kind of have to take it with a grain of salt. Or a distant star. Or something.
In other news, the last Pen Parentis Literary Salon was a lot of fun with 3 terrific writers. I was delighted to be joined by Vanessa Walters (whose own book, The Nigerwife, is being turned into an HBO series) - and I thought I’d have a playback of all this for you by now, but it’s still being edited.
In other not-yet-ready news, I’m going to be interviewed by Canvas Rebel. Not sure if it will be a podcast or print interview but it is a lovely, uplifting site. I was referred by one of the regular members of my recently disbanded writing group. I just realized that every single one of them has a new book out right now:
(A Better World by Sarah Langan - Hate House by John C Foster - Val Vega: Secret Ambassador of Earth by Ben Francisco - Mind Worms by Nicholas Kaufmann - The Serpent’s Shadow by Daniel Braum - Paradise 1 by Dave Wellington - and of course all the new streaming shows based on the oeuvre of Victor LaValle.)
Random Final Thought
(literally I fed the words “short story” and nothing else into an AI art generator and got that image—the sidewalk is….floating?)
About brevity: case in point is a case in point. In the original French, it was merely à point, and originally in English it was just “in point.” But of course we are never as brief as we would like to be, so over time we added an extra word.
As I just added an extra little paragraph. Remember when we used to sign off SSS for “Sorry So Short?” on college-ruled notebook paper we folded into arrows and got you to hand to the friend in front of you?
Sorry So Long.
or …. so long!
You can pry those 8,000-word short stories out of my cold dead hands. I am a long-form cranky old lady and proud of it! All my smartphone is good at is wasting my time on Facebook and IG.
Don't buy the premise. How can something be good if it isn't? Being ostensibly succinct can be a crutch for not expressing oneself.