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“Learning how to be smaller” out now in The Hootlet’s Nook!

This feels like a confessional. I stepped away from writing for almost a decade, occupied with particularly busy periods in my personal and professional life. I came back to writing during the pandemic.

The thing is–I returned to writing by working on my novels, not my poetry. By the fourth book, I realized I needed to trim. My novels (none published, haven’t really tried) are BEASTS. Gigantic, epic, sweeping…bloated with words, choked with characters. One of my best friends and beta readers handed me a metaphoric hatchet and told me to start swinging.

Taking a hatchet to a novel is a skill, one I realized quickly I didn’t have. I needed to learn to be smaller.

The solution: practice. I got more serious about short stories (had written and published a few). I forced myself to write flash fiction.

I over-corrected. Editors screamed for more detail, more description, more space with the characters.

So I let a tempting adjective entrench. I let an adverb sneak in deliciously…

I came back to poetry.