I’m new to this world of blogging, and it’s fun. I’m finding other writers with views similar and dissimilar to my own, and I can always learn something or broaden my outlook by reading them. I focus primarily on blogs about writing and all its extraneous offshoots. But it’s overwhelming to sort through thousands of posts to find the good ones.
This morning I did. A relevant post, well-written, good information, so I started reading, and reading…and reading… Then I noticed the word count – over 1500 words. So I stopped. Now I can’t find that post to look at it again. That’s too bad, because it was interesting.
As writers, nothing is more important to us than our words, but we need to be aware that not all our words are important to everyone else. Sometimes we need to just stop. Right where we are.
A friend asked me to read her 4-page synopsis yesterday – she had to cut it in half. It’s a young adult paranormal, which I don’t read, so maybe that made me more objective, or maybe I’m just ignorant of the genre (which I am), but I brutally slashed it (I hope she’s still speaking to me). I felt like there was a good bit of it, that while important in the story, was not necessarily important in describing the story.
The sad truth is, we live in an I-want-it-now culture, full of text messages, snippets and sidebars. Either we don’t have time, or don’t want to take the time. Something else out there awaits us.
So, in that vein, whatever you write, edit it! Keep it short. To the point. On your blog, if you hit 300 words, cut it or see if you can divide it into two posts. But above all, just STO-
http://www.j-learning.org/present_it/page/writing_and_editing_a_blog/
Alexandra Christle (also writing as Talia Logan) 