The long story

It’s a long story – have you ever heard more annoying words? Together with any interchangeable phrase you can think of, that is generally used to avoid filling someone in on something obviously secret or at least somewhat interesting?

Don’t ask.

I’ll tell you later.

Or my favourite, the quiet response which generally follows a hint of something under the hood, accompanied by the person in the know making eye contact with whoever happened to have been there at the time when the original interesting event occurred, before looking the other way… in the hope that all questions will come to a complete stop.

Okay, don’t tell me, I’m not interested in gossip anyway.

However, it is true, that in fiction, we definitely are interested in the stories that last the longest and especially the gossip that keeps us turning the page, or else we wouldn’t know what has happened, why a certain character is acting in a certain way, or why we should be bothered caring about one character and not another.
They don’t call it a book because it’s a one-pager, a few headlines or a couple pages of visuals, instead of tens of thousands of words that we love to read.

Did you know that the other day, I handed my novel over to my editor again, this time for a line edit? Who knew there were so many types of editing and so much that has to happen before publication.

To be honest, it’s best not to think about it too much.

I suppose I’ll tell you later.

Don’t ask.

It’s a long story.