As discussed, “A 176-Word Update”: more words per daily card than expected, unsustainable. Solution: write less, occasionally, by design.
A friend writes 100-word essays, drabble-like. Catherine Lacey does 144 (a gross). There’s 55 Fiction, 6-Word Memoirs, 221B stories (Sherlock Holmes fanfiction: last word must begin with “B”). Vive l’Oulipo, the French-founded group—writers, mathematicians, pataphysicians—dedicated to “seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy.”
I do love a limitation. (Except when I don’t.)
97 words. Why? The area in cm of a 3x5 Index Card. Rounded up.