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Long-Winded

I am anything but brief. And I need to work on that.

Lately I've been wanting to delve into the world of short stories, but I'm too monogamous - I can't create characters for a one story fling, I feel dirty and like a bad person. Stupid, I know, but sometimes us writer types are weird like that. 

It seems like the only time I'm good at being brief is when I am (or, at least, think I am) being witty. You know, like in facebook statuses. I'm not the kind of person to write, "Ohh nooo all this snowww! It snowed like 2 feet OMG!" More like, "Today is the first day of April. It's been spring for about 2 weeks. It's fucking snowing." Or some random observation. Just spice things up a bit.

Ok, I realize I'm tooting my own horn. I'll stop.

The whole being brief thing has been bugging me (partly because I realize I don't know when to shut up and be concise when explaining things to people) as I've been editing and writing my book/novel/thing for my MFA program. There are a couple of scenes my mentor suggest I cut and summarize to get on to the next piece of action, the next real "scene" as she says, but I'm struggling hardcore. Cutting stuff has always been hard for me, especially when it's a scene or section of dialogue I really worked at. It's like, "Man, that's a really great line. I have to cut that? For real?" So usually I hunker down like a 2-year-old and play stubborn mule. I've been trying to get over that, honest. I've cut a lot of stuff I originally liked and even learned to (cue angel singing) move stuff around. But cutting two scenes down to a summary? How?! Gah!

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