author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I have begun composing drabbles during my daily freewriting time. Drabbles are stories that are exactly 100 words long. Apparently there are a handful of online markets, some as blogs and some as podcasts, that publish them. So it's a multiply useful venture.

Drabbles, like certain forms of poetry, impose rules and restrictions. Restrictions make for very effective writing exercises. They exert a pressure under which the writer discovers what she's really capable of.

If nothing else, you learn to be very choosy about the right word in the right place. You only get one hundred of 'em, after all.