For Sale:

There is a story I want to tell you.  I do not know if it is true.

The story goes something like this. 

Ernest Hemingway was bet that he could not write an entire short story in six words.  The challenge may have been “less than ten words” but the story says he did it in six.  To communicate in six words whole story, with conflicts, characters, love, disappointment, human emotion and struggles seems like an impossible thing to do.  But he did it.

Here is the story:

“For Sale.  Baby shoes.  Never worn.”

I’m sure you've met people who seem to talk and talk and never really say anything.  Words, then, seem to me to be rather like an engine.  Some people rev their engines or put them in first gear, the engine turning at five or six thousand RPM, but never really go anywhere, and certainly do not get there quickly.  Other people try to start in a very high gear to show how grown up they really are, but that generally results in someone stalling out and looking very foolish. 

The proper use of words involves every gear, not just the ones you think the grown ups use.  Hemingway wrote a powerful story in six words, with no word over two syllables, and I have seen people use thousands of words to say absolutely nothing. 

C. S. Lewis has a quote that I recently discovered and immediately fell in love with.  It seems to capture how I would love to be, and how I would love to use words.

“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

Being an adult means not being ashamed to play with crayons.  Being a good writer is not being afraid to step outside your desire to be grand and powerful, and just write.