Page 138 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Marc Erdrich

the rules for a short short (sic) story in Japan, anyway?) (159
words)

He decided he would send a letter along with his submission,
suggesting that the next time the publishers ran a contest based
on word length they consider a character count instead, since it
is conceivable that a person with an extraordinary vocabulary
has the means to write a much longer story than a person with
a limited vocabulary. In all fairness, George thought, if length
is the criterion for judging a work, the number of characters in
a piece is far more critical than the number of words. George’s
word processor even provided a character count that included
the spaces between the words. Perhaps spaces should also be
considered in judging a piece. (274 words)

As he neared the three-hundred-word mark, George won-
dered if he could actually sustain a piece of writing that would
be about the process of writing a 1500-word story for exactly
1500 words. For while the rules specified only that the sto-
ry not exceed 1500 words, George believed (at this particular
moment in his day anyway) that if the story’s actual length was
a consideration, then a story of 1500 words — no more, no
less — should be the winning entry. The only other real possi-
bility was a story of one single, well-chosen word. For a while,
George considered submitting a one-word story. He actually
went through the dictionary and chose a rather large selection
of suitable words. Among them were cupcake, for its double
meaning and because it was really two words made one; stud,
because it too had a double meaning, and because its root in
the Proto-Indo-European language of the Kurgans placed it
among the oldest words we know; and x, the mathematical

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