Working on Words

DD helped me cut down a synopsis (for a competition) from 643 words to 500 words. He was astonished that it could be done. I felt everything that was in the synopsis needed to be there, and worked well in the first place. But we did it.

Which brings me to a point I feel I should make. The misconception that writing short pieces rather than longer ones is easier.
It's not.
Sometimes it is harder.

I'm not saying that, for instance, writing a short story is harder than writing a novel. However, it has been said that novel writing is much easier than script writing.

Sometimes when a short story word limit is 1000 words it's easier than if it was 5000. But equally, if it was 2000 that might be easier than 1000.

I just think that a lot of people (mainly people who aren't writers) think that greater length is to be admired much more than lesser length as far as word count goes. I think it is unfair especially in flash fiction for example, which is really hard to write and yet has a very small word count (somewhere between 50 and 300 words).

At the same time, if you write a novel and it is too short to be publishable, sometimes it is excruciating to lengthen it.

EDIT (JUNE 2010) I was one of the runners up in the competition.