“Transform a piece of advertising so that it has a new message.”

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this prompt, yet found it harder than expected to get the job done.

Working from a stack of old magazines, I searched for a one-page ad with enough text that I could isolate letters to spell a writing-related message. I wanted to focus on the idea of editing—removing everything extraneous to leave only the most essential message.

Ultimately, I wound up with these tiny, nearly related phrases:

“She edits.”
“Errors.”
“Be concise.” (edited from “concice”)
“Short.”
“Hone.”
“Out.”

Not bad. But I’d like to do better. I’ll be scanning magazine ads differently from now on …