... Of Parsimony In Writing

It goes without saying that in order to be a good writer, one has to also be a good reader. These two are mutually inclusive skills, that have at their core the ability to communicate. Ergo, a writer is motivated to write on a subject matter so as to communicate his ideas and viewpoints to either a specified or unspecified audience. At times, it is prudent for a writer to compose a message with an audience in mind, although this is not necessarily crucial. I have read some crap in my life, but there are certain authors and writers that possess that particular ability to turn a phrase that I keep returning to their writings regularly. With that in mind, I have been looking over the past dozen posts of TTT to determine if I would put me on the list of regular 'must reads'. I started reviewing my last dozen posts not as a writer, but as a reader. Wow, even if I say so (it's intrinsic to my Pisces nature!) and I am biased, but these are a fascinating read. They cover a lot of technical and philosophical ground – some of it a tad esoteric. I concluded that I will continue to include me on my list of 'must reads' as I would enjoy reading such material. However, I needed to consider it from the perspective of an average reader, a run of the mill reader.

Immediately, from this perspective I found two particular issues with my posts – their length and the elevated vocabulary used in most of them. Most of the posts could be chopped up into two or three easily digestible posts. Although, I think all of them are well written, I do not feel that they are focused enough on one particular subject matter at a time. It is a quirk of how my mind works … a sort of mental attention deficit disorder that creeps in occasionally into my writing. Say, is that a blue squirrel? Anyway, that is a small quirk that can be corrected by limiting my future posts to no more than a thousand words. This limit will effectively coerce me to better write more focused material and more often. It will no longer be as mentally tiring to churn out these bi-weekly, long form posts. There have been times when a random thought has grown legs and developed into a full post. I would have started writing about some topic, when its flow is interrupted by a random thought. The legs develop as I try to extricate from further developing the random thought, and return to the original flow. That usually fails, but has led to even more interesting posts.

As for the elevated vocabulary – well, that is just par for the course and there really is nothing much I can do about changing it to simpler form of expression. A friend of mine told me it was because I was an intellectual snob. I countered that it was not that I was an intellectual snob, but that I was reaping the benefits of being a bookworm, of being well read. I see how that could be misconstrued as being snobbish. However, I will try to keep it fairly simple and use my other blogs for my more esoteric musings. I will know when I begin to cross this line in the sand – it will be like when the eyes of a run of the mill reader start to glaze over. Trust me, I have personally witnessed the eyes glazing over and seen the look of confusion take over someone's face, when I start meandering through some seemingly complex concepts. This usually happens during heated political debates when I start detailing the minutiae of some policy. What I enjoy more is how most folks will play off that they understand everything that you might be talking about – until you directly confront them about it. Then, there is usually a lot of lip smacking and prevaricating. So, I will do my best to keep it light and flowing easier.

So, doesn't this effectively limit the scope of my random thoughts – not at all. It's just that they will be expressed or covered in smaller chunks. Make sense? It's like explaining to non-politicos just how American democracy doesn't translate to a simple majority rule. Simply – it is because the USA is a republic and therefore obligated to guarantee individual rights as enshrined in the constitution. That's for another day and post. So, this is a slight change of strategy until the next time I change it. The first test of this strategy is whether the frequency of posts increases dramatically. That will be a strong indicator of how well this new strategy will be working. Besides, didn't some wise old man say that the only constant in life was change. In this case, my change has been necessitated both by a thorough review of my current output and by some of the solicited responses I have received. All this feedback has tended to indicate that all the posts have been good – which tells me that I induced some eye glazing. Huh? What can I do?

Here's a thought for today; Every human being's essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature. Lao-Tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE)

Have fun always!!