For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

Geetanjali — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 06:06:10 +0000

In school , after every exam, my teachers would complain “You would score better if you just wrote MORE!” Of course now in college, I’m just another register number so no teacher would know if I was the girl with the 80 in her Business and Corporate writing paper, the subject which requires you to be as brief as possible !

I like brevity, when it comes to writing. Personally, I think that a lot more could be said with shorter pieces, instead of those that ran into pages and pages of nothingness. I remember an incident where I represented school in an another schools inter-school Creative Writing competition. There were two entrants from each school, and the other guy from mine was.. well.. a bit over confident when it came to his writing. My story was about 3 sides long, and his ran into 8 or 9. I will never forget that look on his face when he saw how short my story was. Anyway, I came second. And he… didn’t.

The other day in college, we explored Flash Fiction, and I LOVED it! My favourite piece would be Hemingway’s six word flash fiction story :

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

The story is sad, yes, but I love it more for the fact that it shows how the speaker/person/character who put up the sign is attempting to overcome such a difficult thing. Every time I read it, a new wave of awe develops.

Nice article on Flash Fiction here

geetanjali » Creative Writing

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn