Drabbling

I needed a distraction from one of my countless projects and decided to whip up five drabbles to submit to the Black Box e-anthology. It's the for-charity followup to Brimstone's previous Shadow Box. There's no money to gain from this, only a free copy of the e-book. But since it's asking only for drabbles (stories under 120 words) I figured why not, might be fun. It twas.

Now, the toughest challenge of drabbling (can I trademark this term?) was keeping my stories at 120 and under. Think it's easy? Well, it's not, especially for me as I tend to get wordy in my prose, sometimes to the point of excessive. And even then it's intentional. I popped out five quick tales of horrific happenings and then spent most of the time trying to cut them down. If any writers want to learn how to "kill their darlings," this is a good experience. You aren't just line editing to line edit, you're trimming and cutting and dissecting with the malice of a doctor who is operating on the man his wife's cheated on him with: anything stupid or unnecessary can (and must) go. Snip! Snip!

It's a shame there isn't a larger market for drabbles and short-shorts. We'll see if Black Box wants any of them; if not, they were still enjoyable to do. Plus, distraction is always fun. Same with procrastination. They're like my own private angel/devil shoulder team. In fact, I'm hanging out with them even as I type this post...