I’ve spent hours this week listening to The Art of Brevity, a brilliant celebration of “less is more.”

“Flash fiction is a brook flowing through the woods. It is easy to step over, and it’s not big enough to be on any map, but then when you pause to observe it, you see life teeming within it.”   The Art of Brevity, pg. 26

This month I begin the excavation and distillation of six decades of stories housed in one heavy file box and five burgundy looseleaf notebooks. The stories began when a 14-year-old girl’s father died and then, five days later, she was whisked off to a remote all-girls’ boarding school over a hundred miles from home. Writing saved her life. That girl, of course, is me.

Now that I’ve learned more about the power of brevity, I am seeing these disparate stories through a new lens, as a collection of vignettes rather than as a cohesive narrative. My life hasn’t been cohesive. How could my stories be?

I plan to share these vignettes here over the coming months. Developing this discipline of brevity will be the challenge. I smile as I see this post is well over 200 words, so that’s all for now.

Below is a sketch from a glorious trip to Sugar Hill, New Hampshire this past week.

Time spent traveling, painting, and writing is my idea of heaven.

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As always, thanks for spend some time with me “aloft.” Happy gazing and sketching!