Friday Writings #135: Less is More

 

 

G’day again dear Word Weavers. 

I wrote most of this post ahead of time, but now have come down with the dreaded COVID. As some of you may well know, it isn't fun! But I am doing all the things I should and have good friends to go shopping for me etc. And Magaly has kindly agreed to do the hosting for me here, this time.

In other news, I’ve been revising some of my not-quite-working poems by seeing what I can usefully take out of them. ‘Cut and clean up’ one of my friends calls this method of working on her own poems. (In my case, it might sometimes be more like slash and burn!) 

In the far past I've been known to chop up poems manually, with scissors, for deletions or rearrangements. Luckily it's much easier digitally now.

 

 (Photo mine.)

 

Recently, in some cases I’ve been applying the erasure technique to my own poems, taking rather large chunks out of them; sometimes ending up with quite fragmentary results, which nevertheless work, and work better than the original. There are indeed times when ‘less is more.’

Your optional prompt this week is to take one of your poems or stories and turn it into a new piece of writing by removing some words and/or sections. It could be a series of tweaks or a full-scale erasure; up to you, so long as ‘less is more.' (You might like to leave a link to the original too, or include it in your post.)

Guidelines:

You may write to the prompt or ignore it.
You may share poetry or prose, new or old.
One post per person, please, 369 words maximum (excluding title).
Link to that post in Mister Linky below.
 
Please, if possible, read other people’s posts too and leave them some encouraging comments. Also we welcome comments below if there’s anything you’d like to say to the group or the team.

Next week, Magaly will invite us to write poetry or prose inspired by Grace Lee Boggs’s quote, “We can begin by doing small things…”