Overwriting bothers me. Nothing will make me put down a book or navigate away from a blog faster than a writer in love with his own words. The best writers don’t get in the way of their own stories. It’s cliche to love Hemingway, I know, but I don’t care. He’s the best. Reading him brings back the concept of what you don’t need to say, or what my college lit professor referred to as, “the leaving out.” One of my favorite examples of Hemingway doing this is a short story he wrote when challenged to do so in six words:
For sale: baby shoes, never used.
Wired once asked a bunch of writers to do it. Could fishing writers? Here’s my effort:
The hook straightened. I quickly retied.
UPDATE: Here’s one submitted my Wyatt of the Fly Times blog:
Rained hard, river’s blown. Driving home.
