I sat down to write this blog entry just as the sun floated above the reddening treescape out my window, and before I tapped a single key a black bird sailed into my field of vision and, loudly, right into my window. From there, it dropped undramatically to the ground where, I assumed, it remained.
There is, in descending order, the novel, the short story, "flash" fiction, Haiku and, finally, the emoji. Except I thought blog posts must be included somewhere in there, despite the deepening suspicion that blogging is not a respected art form anymore. Or ever.
But, irregardless, as they say, I'm wondering how long blog posts are supposed to be. I've looked at most of mine lately, and they seem to hover somewhere just shy of the 500 word mark. Why is that, I'm wondering? They used to be shorter, years ago. Some have weighed in much longer, but those are not so common.
The reason I'm worried about this is I don't want to fall into a non-productive habit. I think there may be an expectation of a certain length, and since I am "a writer," and therefore (?) want to be loved and accepted, I may have tuned into that expectation and unconsciously modified my writing accordingly.
Anyway, I have no idea. But it makes me remember what I thought when I first read an admonition in a memo within the phone company, back in the "early days" of computing. It said something like, remember, when you compose an email, studies have shown you have just 15 seconds to capture the readers attention, and if you fail, they won't read the email. What I thought was: Really? Well f*ck you.
And I remembered one of Heinlein's novels where the protagonist killed someone in the first sentence. I tried that tack for awhile until I realized that it causes you to run out of characters somewhere around page 17. Page 3, if you're really good.
The bird is gone.
I am sure many of my “likes” come from people who don’t read my posts, which is depressing sometimes. I’ve begun writing on Medium, where reading is quantified in cents. Last month I made 11 cents. This month I’m around $1.20 so far. You have to write interesting stuff so people view the entire piece... and you know if you’ve succeeded by the results. Worth a shot?
ReplyDeleteI'll check it out. Thanks!
ReplyDelete(I read all of your posts, except the mushy ones, sometimes.)
I wanted to write on Medium. Then I didn't. Now I do again. I keep coming up with predictive historical theories that are absolutely brilliant to everyone within arm's reach, and The Blog doesn't seem quite the place. Oh wait. I already wrote it there. Well, that's just a draft repository then, or something.
ReplyDeleteAny case, I'm writing less and less. This is because Facebook is a waste of time and energy (bandwidth, as we say in smartypantsland) and I am continuing my veeery slow exit, and journaling, which I've done too much of for over thirty years, mostly just amplifies whatever shitty mood compelled me to journal in the first place. I could blog very short things every day, and sometimes I want to, but the overall point escapes me. I know all these things have to do with the fundamental human need to be seen, and I have an intuition that using the internet to be seen while I continue to hide (as I have after a fashion all my life) has not really served me. Sadly they have this pandemic on that kind of obviates all other options.
Maybe blog short fiction (again) after all. That is after all what I intended when I started my current one. Hmmmmm but who has time for that? (I ask while sitting at a computer.)
So the bird survived the crash do you think?
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, the bird is fine, being merely a literary device to draw you into my post! He lives to fly again into another plot.
ReplyDeleteBut, it is my experience that real birds are pretty tough, too, and each of the birds that flew into the living room window in Tucson, when I was there, were able to fly off. Sore, and annoyed, possibly, but gone.