In my 1000 Words class you could write anything you wanted –poem, essay, memoir, story, children’s book–as long as it was fewer than one thousand words. Does it sound easier to write short than long? It’s not. You have to take an image, a dream, a thought, a burning wish, and hone and pare it until there’s not an extra word.
This process of distilling words is my great love and my great challenge in everything I write. When I read the poem below –twelve short words that encompass the un-beginning of an entire life–I was spellbound.
Infertility, by Wendy Chin
You end me
like a period
ends a sentence
ends a line.
For more information about Wendy Chin-Tanner, please click here.
Alison McGhee 