brevity

If I'm to start writing again, I think that now is the time (long past the time, chorus my teachers of yesteryear) for me to learn a thing or two about keeping my writings short. To be fair to myself, I think I've always been fairly good at getting a lot of meaning out of my words, but there just always seems to be so much to say. So, if I can manage it, I'll aim to say one thing at a time, and say it in a reasonable amount of time.

For starters, I don't have three hours at a stretch to work out the nuances of a four-page post right now. I'm lucky to get 40 minutes, and that 40 minutes still involves periodically getting up to fish bits of paper out of Evie's mouth or right her when she gets backed into a corner and starts fussing. So it's brevity or nothing, really.

It's a good habit for other reasons, too, though. Generally, I think that plenty of people will read a longish post if they basically agree with it...people like to be agreed with. And while I'd certainly enjoy a few rounds of "Wow, you are so right! You are just awesome," what I'd really like is to provoke thought in people who maybe don't quite agree with me, or just plain hadn't thought of it. And people have a very limited appetite for ideas they find weird or disagreeable. (Well, okay, most people. I know I'm not the only one who will occasionally stumble across a new idea and then forget to, say, eat in pursuit of more information.)

Well, no time like the present!