Evonne moans into her wine. “I can’t make my rent this month. It’s so unfair.”
She looks pointedly at the check then pulls the latest iPhone out of her purse and taps it with manicured nails.
“Grow up.” I take my thrift-shop dress and worn shoes and leave.
This week’s prompt from @jayna is money. After some brainstorming and a lot of editing, I ended up with this one. Special thanks to Andrew J. Savage (@thinknzombie) for coming up with a way to cut words and tweak my arc so it still worked.
Fifty word stories aren’t easy and sometimes the ideas we have just can’t be condensed effectively into the short format. That happened for me last week and my rough draft hit 900 words quickly, so I didn’t share anything. This week it again cries out to be longer, although I feel okay about this variant.
I don’t really mind, though, when I end up with a story that needs to be longer, because it still means I am writing. Also longer stories have more mainstream potential than the tightest ones. But the tight ones are such good practice in word economy and the impact of word choice that they are well worth the investment of time to do them right.
I will have to see with time what happens with my longer story from last week. It’s still in editing.
Cover art based on photo by Alfonso Scarpa on Unsplash
