Autumn of 2015, I was inspired to enter a contest sponsored by Oberon Wines. The theme was, "What do roots mean to you?" I wrote 1100 words about my Friulian ancestry, well within the 1400 word limit. Or so I thought until I copied and pasted my words and they didn't fit in the field provided. Then I looked at the error message: Maximum 1400 characters. Darn it! It was just past midnight when I discovered that my story was too long and despite being awake since 4:30 AM that m