TOO MUCH…?

Sometimes I think that I write far too much. Not too often, I think (although that is an accusation that could be levelled), but definitely far too many words.

I do take the time, when I’ve got nothing better to do (and which is far more often than I’d really like…), to read other blogs, some of which are even ‘connected’ (if that’s the word) to the ‘professional’ news outlets and therefore could be considered to be the work of ‘real’ writers.

Quite regularly, I’ll be idly skimming across one or other of the news stories of the day only to find a link which says ‘read about it in our blog’ or something very similar and, like the dutiful robot I am, I’ll click on the link and find myself reading another page of what adds up to little more than a load of old “I reckon…” albeit written by a ‘professional’ and with it will be a stack of comments that choose to agree or disagree with that ‘reckoning’ until the whole thing implodes into a big old spat between other people who either ‘reckon’ the opposite or agree with it.

This is what we now regard as being press freedom, or free speech in this crazy world full of misguided or ill-informed opinion.

But that isn’t really what I’m here to discuss today.

Perhaps I’m not here to actually ‘discuss’ anything at all.

Maybe all I do is ‘reckon’ something myself…?

But I’m drifting away from the point again. What I have noticed is how often those pieces are (perhaps mercifully?) really quite short. I scroll down the page to read the rest of the article and find that I don’t have to. It’s all been said and without so much as a word slipping off the bottom of my screen, and I, for one, can find that quite impressive.

After all, when I first started this follysome exercise of blogging for myself, one of the pieces of advice on offer was to keep it brief and to the point, but then I find myself occasionally droning on and on about some topic or other that’s really got my juices flowing, and I realise that I’ve written pages and pages of stuff that I really shouldn’t expect anyone to want to read in full.

“Keep it simple, stupid…” should, of course, be my mantra, but, more than that, keep it brief.

If I can’t say what I want to say in 500 words, do I really think that I’ll say it any better in 1500…? After all, it’s not a thesis I’m writing here, it’s a blog, an electronic bit of whimsy that’s supposed to try and divert myself and any passing strangers for just long enough for us to perhaps agree to disagree, or (occasionally) to nod in agreement at the ‘sage wisdom’ or otherwise being displayed here, before going through the rest of day with the possibility of having a new thought or point of view to mull over.

I need to learn when enough is enough, even though I never truly believe that I’ve said all that I think I have to say until I have, at the very least, broken into that second page of A4 using my 12 point Times New Roman…

Although sometimes…

No, never mind.

That is all.