Writing Less is More

I used to write essays/editorials. For a long spell, I sold dozens of these to three or four regular newspaper clients. I had a 1,000-word limit. This was good training. My average first draft was around 1,500 words, and telling the same story in two-thirds of the words is a great discipline. People don't want to read all your digressions. They want you to stay on topic.

As my clients went out of business, or new editors came in with different tastes, I started self-publishing myself on my various blogs. This is bad because there's no money at all in it, and fewer readers. But it's also good because there's no rejection. Everything you write gets published. But there's also no discipline. You don't have that 1,000-word limit. Out of habit I still tend to edit down, but I am seeing many, many bloggers who have never experienced writing for print publication -- or even writing under a copy editor -- who have no discipline or polish at all. A few of them even have avid followings. I just wish they were better self-editors. I had to give up reading most of the posts on rvablogs.com because it's like a Wild, Wild West of undisciplined, unedited verbal diarrhea for the most part.

So there I was, rattling along on my various blogs, writing in a silent vacuum for mostly myself when I discovered Twitter. Twitter doesn't just limit your words. It limits your characters to 140. Big words can drastically reduce how much you can say. This was a challenge, to write that small, that concisely, that to the point.

It's also a lot less work when you get the hang of it, meaning I neglect most of my blogs now for the quick, dirty, in-and-out of Twitter. I neglect reading blogs because a Twitter stream is so much more efficient. I can tell immediately, in seconds, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not. Writing less is the future.

It's hard to pick up a newspaper after you've been in the Twitter stream, or even watch the evening news, because both news reporting disciplines still depend on time-honored but archaic ways of padding out a story. For instance, getting a man-on-the-street comment or observation, which is just ridiculous. Who is this random person? Why do I care what they think? They're actually just a stand-in for the reporter who, because of that objectivity thing, cannot react emotionally to whatever he/she is reporting.

Or the horrible, terrible how-do-you-feel question. Something terrible has happened to you or to someone you know, or someone you've heard about. How do you feel?

I feel bad. I feel sad.

No one ever says, I feel nothing. Or I don't care. Or I am precariously enjoying the suffering of this other person. No one!

We need to get past this style of reporting because people want the news fast, short, and unadorned with the unnecessary or obvious observation. Get to the point. Write like you were tweeting.