For him, it was a constant struggle to make things shorter.
His stories rarely filled more than a page of type. He would count the number of words, then start culling again. Removing a word here, or one there. Maybe using just one word to replace two or three. It was a continual battle. His favourite stories were those with only fifty words, or less. Sometimes he managed to tell a tale in only forty, or even thirty. Rarely was he able to manage it with twenty, and rarer still, ten.
His latest triumph was his story that contained only five words! It was, he felt, almost a masterpiece. It was the pinnacle of his writing career, and yet, he wanted improve on it. He spent many hours on it, snipping it here, reducing it there. Finally, he sat looking at a single word. A word that he eventually decided was completely superfluous. Once gone, he sat staring at the page. It was just a white rectangle sitting in the middle of his computer screen, but… he printed it anyway.
When his five-year-old daughter came in from play, He handed her the sheet.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s my latest story. What do you think?”
She stared at the page for several minutes without saying anything. He could see she was concentrating and was perfectly happy to remain quiet.
“Lots of elephants,” she began, “they are all walking slowly in a long line, holding each other’s tails. It is a very sunny day. There aren’t many trees. But it’s very nice.”
He nearly spoke before she looked up, saying, “They are really happy.”
The writer clapped.
