When I was younger, I would have said that you should write what needs to be written, and stop there. My thinking was, at least in part, a rationalization for writing shorter pieces, which generally take less time and effort than longer work. And it was also partly a disdain for padding out papers with BS. I had a strong sense that for any question, the answer only had so much to it.
As I’ve gotten more comfortable writing, however, I find that most ideas are so entangled with others that it is almost impossible to draw any concrete line where you can say “this is all that needs to be said,” because pretty much every answer will lead to new questions.
Nowadays, I feel almost the opposite: if you have interesting material, then the question is not so much about what needs to be said, as it is about what your audience will bear. What’s the attention span of your audience? Whatever it may be, if you have a sense of it—whether they’ll read 100 words or 1,000 or 10,000—then you can give your audience a presentation that suits the time they have available.
There is a lower limit on this, however: If you are interested in discussing complex ideas, you’re probably going to need hundreds or thousands of words. Very short forms simply do not allow for tremendous detail.
This little essay (if it can be dignified as such) is about 250 words—a good length for stopping, I think. What do you think should determine how much you write: what you have to say, or the amount your reader wants?
Category: Blog Related
Sometimes I write about the blog itself.
Back to blogging
Back in February, I wrote about Henry Miller’s “commandment” to himself to “work on one thing at a time until finished,” and, with a looming contractual deadline for the revised manuscript (typescript) of my book, I was doing that—at least with respect to my own writing.
I just recently finished revisions of my book manuscript, which is now in production with the publisher, Routledge. With the contractual deadline approaching, and with a fairly ambitious plan for revision, I dropped any work on writing blog posts. I didn’t actually work on only one thing at a time, because I did still have other stuff to do, but at least my efforts writing my own original material focused on the book manuscript.
But now that I’ve got the manuscript done, I’m turning back to writing blog posts. Before the hiatus, I had been writing one post each week, but as I come back I think I might aim at shorter and more frequent blog posts—instead of about 1,000 words per post, once a week, I’m going to explore the possibility of shorter, more frequent pieces. This post and the last have been more like 200 words than 1,000. I’m wondering what the ideal length for a blog post should be. What do you think?
Explicitly Stating Intentions
In some ways, this blog is merely a continuation of a project of ten years or so, but switching it to a new URL is a beginning of sorts, and it can be useful to state intentions.
My general intentions for the blog are to post weekly, generally on a subject related to the process of writing, especially, but not exclusively, academic writing. My hope is that reflection on issues of the process will help writers find insight into their own processes. I often try to blend abstract reflection on ideas with specific practical suggestions, but I have been known to get absorbed in philosophy to the neglect of practical concerns. My hope is also that by presenting useful information about the writing process, I provide potential clients with evidence that my services are valuable. (I’ll risk the danger that my blog posts are so helpful that people who read them never need help again!) Thus, to summarize, my intentions are multiple: 1. to blog with a certain regularity; 2. to cover a certain subject; 3. to help writers; and 4. to promote my business.
But those are only my intentions for the blog generally. My intentions for this specific post are to describe my intentions for the blog, and to talk (well, write, actually, but…) about why I want to set my intentions, and, more generally, about the value I see in setting intentions/expectations/goals/what-have-you.
As a writer there are a few reasons that setting intentions/expectations/goals can be helpful. While I don’t think any of these reasons are rocket science or deep hidden secrets, I do think it worth trying to make them explicit as part of a program of convincing writers of the value of setting intentions.
Firstly, clearly stating intentions gives your readers a reason to read. By clearly stating that my intention is to help writers, potential readers who are interested in their writing process might be motivated to read. Admittedly, stating my intention also sends away potential readers who are not interested in writing, but that’s okay because I can’t really help people who aren’t writers. It’s not entirely out of the question that someone might enjoy my writing style, or might read my blog for a personal reason (like that they’re my friend), but on the whole, what I have to offer is help for writers. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to offer something that everyone wants—that’s got to be good for a business, right?—but rather that what I do have to offer is of value to only some people. By stating my intentions, I can create a connection with my readers.
A separate level of value in setting intentions is its value for my writing process. In this respect, setting intentions can be a two-edged sword: if intentions are poorly stated, disappointment can follow, and disappointment does not help a writer keep writing. At the same time, though, I believe that the other side of the dynamic is also operative: not only is there a danger of being disappointed after clearly setting intentions, but there is also a danger in not setting intentions, and not setting them clearly and realistically. Without setting intentions, you can spend a lot of time and at the end feel like you’ve got nothing to show for it (that may not be true—spending a lot of time writing, even if without clear intentions, can certainly help improve skill as a writer).
Setting intentions will help you focus efforts: if you say “I want to write a blog post”, that defines parameters. If you say “I want to write a blog post to help writers,” or “I want to write a blog post about setting intentions that will help writers,” all of these statements help me focus my efforts. Having set an intention, I have a focus for my writing that guides me when interesting but tangential ideas occur to me, or ones that are interesting and completely unrelated. My intentions help keep me from getting distracted.
It can be frightening to set intentions—by saying “I want to get published,” a standard is defined that can be violated, thus leading to disappointment or frustration. If I say (as I have), “I want to post a blog post each week,” then if I fail to post, I am disappointed. Multiple failures to post might even lead to sufficient disappointment in my ability to post that I start to think that I can’t live up to that standard. If I say I want to get published and I don’t get published, that is obviously disappointing.
But if we’re concerned with the psychology, isn’t it also worth noting that, because setting intentions is frightening—because saying “I want to get published” is intimidating—we might harbor the ambition without admitting it? A creative writer might say “Oh, I’m just writing for the fun of it,” when, in fact, he or she wants to be published but is concerned about setting a goal and then failing to reach it.
It might be worth it to state ambitious intentions and then be OK with not quite achieving them. After all, if you fail to achieve a goal on a first effort, that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve it on the second. Indeed, often the first failure is crucial in providing guidance as to how to move forward.
I’m going to wrap up even though I’ve got more to say. One of my general intentions for this blog—one on which I was pretty clear, but which I did not state earlier—was to write posts of about 1,000 words in length, and I’m getting right up to that now. There’s more that I could say about setting intentions and the benefit in setting intentions, but I’m not going to cover it all.
Going forward, I want this blog to help writers. I want to provide guidance that helps people develop effective and productive writing processes and practices. My subjects and discussion will be skewed towards talking about academic writing, and especially common dissertation problems, because that’s where I’ve done most of my work, but a lot of writing issues are true for all writers.
Welcome to my new blog
Over ten years ago, I started a blog on Blogger, using that service because I didn’t want to try to manage my own blog (WordPress was still young, and I was unfamiliar with it–I’m hardly at the cutting edge of tech).
I started with a modest post about developing “momentum” as a writer–developing a sense of progress, a sense of motion that helps make each new writing session move better. It aimed at helping others with their writing, and also at providing a practice that would help me improve my writing.
It’s been an on-and-off project. For over a year back near the beginning, I wrote a post every day, usually with a length of around 1,000 words. That practice helped me improve my own writing, but I let it lapse to focus on other writing projects (two books completed: one as second author–Horst Rittel’s Universe of Design, and one all my own–Getting the Best of Your Dissertation, as well as a third currently in submission to publishers). For many years, I posted rarely, if at all, but last year, I started posting on a weekly basis with an aim to improving my search engine visibility, which is also my motivation for moving both blog and website to a new WordPress platform.
My primary aim is to provide useful suggestions and guidance for writers, though I will likely write about other subjects as they suit me. I invite you to ask questions: do you have any questions or ideas about the process of writing?
My old blog and its posts are currently at thoughtclearing.blogspot.com.