Five Years a Writer

The writing challenge was  to write the same story four times, with increasingly fewer words.  Read the original post that explains the background here .  My four stories are below: -- Read from the top down to 'reduce' the story with each reading  Read from  the bottom up  to 'grow' the story with each reading Note that each version has a different title that signals the content 900 words A TELLING TALE: Spidey senses, ducks, and big changes —————————————————————————————— —— Once upon a time there was a woman who thought she just needed to try harder and do more in order to succeed in the workplace where she had landed eleven years earlier. It had been a good run, but she was growing bored and she wanted more. More seniority, more responsibility, more respect. More money would have been nice, but money was not the driver. By this point, she had an office with a door though no window. She liked the door for what it gave her — a closed and quiet space in wh...

If September feels like its own New Year, then, for me, October feels like my own "new lease on life" anniversary. Because t wenty-one years ago on October 1, I was let go from the corporate world and, unplanned by me, was pushed down a path that opened a whole new world to me — the world of graduate studies, freelance work and, eventually, teaching.  Being ushered out of the corporate world and into my own brave new world was, in retrospect, a very good thing because I had to learn how to set my own terms and make my own way in the world of earning a living. Which I did.  This summer, my writing group took on the challenge of writing one story four ways: start with a 900-word version, then pare it down to 500 words, then 250 and, finally, just 100 words. I decided to write about  my exit from the corporate world and my subsequent career path.  As I worked my way through the four different story versions, it was interesting to see what I had to take out, could l...