The electrician had finished his work and was packing up.
The lady of the house had mentioned that her husband, tucked away at the back of the house, was a writer. She mentioned, in a throw away manner, that he posted his stories on a blog. “Feel free to pop your head in,” she had said. When he was ready to leave, although he knew the man at the back was a private individual, he thought he would take up the suggestion and say hello, if only to be polite. He wandered up the hall and found the door partly open.
As he stepped in, he looked around at a nicely appointed study. The husband, who’d been tapping away on a laptop, looked up. With unfocused eyes, he said, “All done?”
The man nodded. Feeling awkward, and with an embarrassed smile, he blurted out, “Well, what’s this all about then?”
The husband raised his eyebrows. “Ah! Well, I’m glad you asked. Getting to the nub of it, my short stories are compressed pieces of prose fiction, with each one dealing briefly with a slice of life. In all cases, they are designed to be read in a single sitting. They give a fleeting glimpse into the worlds of others. In the main, they are created with the aim of enabling the reader to focus momentarily on some incident or event that is, in itself, self-contained. They are typically written using between one-hundred and three-hundred words. The intention here being to quickly evoke within the reader a corresponding sense of mood. The standalone nature of the piece is intended to be a match with the nature of the reading of it.”
The man just stood for a while, looking perplexed.
The writer said, “I scribble.”