Friday, January 27, 2012

Overheard #180

The more words I take out, the better my writing is.

4 comments:

Lori said...

Ha!

Wyman Stewart said...

Making the blank page the perfect story. No wonder I've never achieved perfection in my writing!

TimInMich said...

When we were discussing this at crit group, I kept thinking of a science fiction story from decades ago. It posited that, because toilet paper and checks often tear someplace besides the perforations, the more you remove, the stronger paper becomes. (Probably one-ply. I have that problem with cheap paper towels, which I don't buy now.) Until you have an invisible, immeasurably strong substance!
I managed to track down most of a story online: "It Was Nothing, Really!" by Theodore Sturgeon. It's not so much a story as a poke at the military-industrial complex in the mid-60's.
I read that long ago, but it wasn't the story I was thinking of. I swear there's another piece along those lines that's more of a story. "The Thin Edge of Nothing" is the title that came to me, but I couldn't find a sci-fi story called that.

Ruth McNally Barshaw said...

The Thin Edge of Nothing is a great title for a novel!