Still Elusive . . .

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  In an effort at some late-in-life character improvement, I decided last week to learn to write the elusive (to me) short story.  I can be quite formidable when I apply myself to learning something.  I think of my life with the Goldberg Variations, for instance.  After a week, however, I have managed only to come up with a paltry three paragraphs detailing a woman sitting at an outdoor cafe table.  I've been made privy to no other details of this woman's story.  I changed things a dozen times, gave her ample opportunity to talk to me.  But the most I got from her was sullen silence and a hint that there was more to her than met the eye.

So I will confess that I deleted that bothersome page and went back to my novel.  So much goes on there— complex characters with problems to be solved, living spaces to be understood, memories to be interpreted and carried forward, mistakes to be corrected, meals to be cooked, pockets to be examined to see if some scrap of paper thought lost might be crumbled there . . .

I am officially giving up the idea of writing the short story.  As of today, Wednesday morning, 8:00 a.m., 15 August 2012.