My colleagues are writing short. I admire this. This is a skill. I have some skills. I make very good pie and can swear a blue streak. I can identify a first-or-second season Blue’s Clues episode in the first ten seconds, and I excel at cleaning up toddler vomit. But I cannot write short. I have written one short story in my adult life and one poem. The first was for public consumption, the second most decidedly was not.

I’ve dreamt of trying my hand at picture books. I have ideas. These ideas turn out to be bad ones. I’m in awe of the poets and the picture book writers, to people who can create something in hundreds of words when I need tens of thousand.

I want to try. I know the life you must breathe every word, the control you must have over every image, would be nothing but good for me. But the truth is I can’t even think that way, I don’t know how to give something like that life.

I think I’ll let Marsha Q. try first.

Meanwhile, I have gone through an entire post without complaining about my editorial letter, for which I think I deserve some credit. My editor, I should note, does not write short either.

(That was not complaining, by the way, just a statement of fact.)