I struggle with how to write blog-posts that are the right length—that people will read. Experts tell me that blogs must be short. It makes sense. These days many of us get on the internet through phones or tablets while walking down the street, taking the bus to work, or waiting for lattes at Starbucks. Screen time is short and content is overwhelmingly abundant and ephemeral; today’s readers will take in a tweet as it flies by but won’t even look at something long and wordy, substantial and weighty.
I don’t completely believe it; but if it is true then I’m whooped. I’m just the opposite, completely out of tune, an evolutionary throwback. Tweets most often bore me but I’m fascinated by new ideas that can push or expand my understanding, shift my perspective, that take time to absorb or develop. If it’s true that now people only read tweets and blurbs, then I’m in a real “Catch-22”: what I want to write is what people won’t read.
But I want to write blog posts that people read. That’s the whole point of writing a blog. What to do? Well, to begin with, I’m telling myself, don’t take that conventional wisdom whole-hog at face value. It is partly true—but only partly.
People do a lot of surfing and tweeting. No one wants to waste time, and the net offers an infinite variety of time-stealing snares and traps. But nevertheless you can still find a lot of good, substantive, in-depth, challenging content on line. It is there, all considerations to the contrary. That’s what I want to participate in and add to.
That said, writing well and to the point in as few words as possible is a virtue in any medium. So I’ll continue trying to be admirably and readably concise—and doubtless often failing anyway (witness my last post) to keep my entries within recommended limits.
To make up for failures in that regard and to compensate for posts that exceed the ideal brevity, I’ll offer a simple conventional compromise: I will begin with a summary. It may be longer than a tweet but still remain well within what conventional wisdom and much expert opinion says is OK for a blog post.
If the summary sufficiently tweaks your interest then you can continue on into the lengthier, weightier body of the post. If not, we’ll part friends. You weren’t mired down in a lengthy treatise and I’ve had the honour of your consideration.