Comfort zone, that is.  And I’m not talking so much about genre as I am about style.

I edited my little Halloween short that I posted last week and whereas I normally end up writing slightly sprawling sentences, the majority of them ended up being exceptionally short.  By any standard.  It was odd to write but the style just appeared there of its own accord, as if it were meant to be written in short, choppy sentences.  Now I know short sentences, given the right setting, convey suspense.  But that wasn’t it here.  I was aiming for something more.  What, I have no idea.

When I got through the first edit, I went through again and shortened up the sentences I felt were too long.  Those stragglers.  I think my longest sentence had all of 7 words.  Maybe.  But I can say doing that is harder than drawing out sentences.  Anyone can ramble.  I’m notorious for doing that.  But cutting your words down to only the bare minimum is one of the hardest things to do.  So why did it come so naturally to this story?

I don’t get it.

Writing within a word maximum is hard enough.  I love my rambling.  But why did it dictate and even more stringent style within those confines?  The style came so easy but the crafting proved more difficult.  How can I have both things for the same work?  How can the same words be both easy and hard to formulate?  How can it come so naturally but it’s toil to get it right?

Does this make sense?  Why did the act come so easily but the technique was so hard?  It seems like a juxtaposition.  Has this happened to anyone else?  Where a certain short dictated a particular style so easily but when they went to write it, it was like pulling teeth?  Yet there was just no other way?  Please tell me I’m not crazy.