Blaise Pascal once wrote:
“I’m sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
Pascal’s apology is contrary to the common belief that to write longer we need more time. We have all experienced, at some stage in our life like when we had to write essays and compositions for language or literature courses, how hard it was to do so if we had limited number of words. The lesser the number of words required, the harder it became for us to write.
Poetry is perhaps the hardest form of writing, followed by the short-short (story), and then the short story. The writer of the short form of fiction cannot wander like the novelist does. There is no place for him or her to ramble, since every paragraph, every sentence and every word has to serve its purpose of adding to the story, of changing the character, of moving the story forward. The short story, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe, must:
“Be brief enough to read at one sitting, and that anything not contributing to the total effect of the story be omitted.”
To illustrate the importance of cutting and editing to the writers of fiction, Barbara Wernecke Durkin told the following story:
A little boy sat on a stump, contemplating the chunk of wood in his hand. “What’re you going to do with that?” his father asked. “Going to carve an elephant,” the boy said, confident. “And how do you know how to go about carving an elephant?” “Easy,” the boy replied. “All I have to do is cut away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.”
My favorite illustration however remains E. L. Doctorow’s account of his attempt at writing an absence note for his daughter. When an interviewer for Paris Review interviews asked him:
“You once told me that the most difficult thing for a writer to write was a simple household note to someone coming to collect the laundry, or instructions to a cook.”
E. L. Doctorow’s response was:
“What I was thinking of was a note I had to write to the teacher when one of my children missed a day of school. It was my daughter, Caroline, who was then in the second or third grade. I was having my breakfast one morning when she appeared with her lunch box, her rain slicker, and everything, and she said, “I need an absence note for the teacher and the bus is coming in a few minutes.” She gave me a pad and a pencil; even as a child she was very thoughtful. So I wrote down the date and I started, “Dear Mrs. So and So, my daughter Caroline…” and then I thought, No, that’s not right, obviously it’s my daughter Caroline. I tore that sheet off, and started again. “Yesterday, my child…” No, that wasn’t right either. Too much like a deposition. This went on until I heard a horn blowing outside. The child was in a state of panic. There was a pile of crumpled pages on the floor, and my wife was saying, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.” She took the pad and pencil and dashed something off. I had been trying to write the perfect absence note. It was a very illuminating experience. Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.”
What do you think? Have you had a similar experience you like to share?