What do you think of short form?

Seems to me a lot of short writing is like brain farts

Happy Friday,

I used to write for a publication called 500 Words. The idea behind the publication was to trim the fat, basically. To remove every bit of fluff and rambling and write a really concise story. That’s hard!

Writing short can be harder than writing long. There’s tons of quotes in literature to back up the idea that writing concisely is harder than rambling. :)

Mark Twain was the most famous.

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today.  If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”— Mark Twain

But that wasn’t his idea. Writers have been talking about how hard it is to write “short” since as far back as Cicero.

— “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” ~Cicero

— “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” — Blaise Pascal

Basically, they’re talking about concise writing. Brutally trimming the fluff and fat so that every sentence, every word is carefully chosen. So that when the editing is done, every word and sentence is there intentionally.

Easy reading is damn hard writing, as the saying goes.

But sometimes, short writing is just brain farts…

Concise writing is hard. Hell, William Zinsser taught a course on it at Yale and then wrote a book based on the class. The book sold over 1.5 million copies.

I wrote about it, and it’s one of my more popular posts.

Also worth noting that concise doesn’t necessarily mean short. You can write a piece that’s concise, but long.

Concise just means the writer has meticulously edited to strip the fluff, bloat and rambling. It doesn’t really say anything about length. You know?

A lot of people are loving “short form” on Medium lately. They say it’s a lot easier to write a 2 minute read than a 5-7 minute read. I guess if you’re not striving for concise, it probably is. Just hiccup some words and hit publish?

Seems to me a lot of short form is more like brain farts that stories.

It’s like people get an idea, vomit it onto the page and hit publish. Not so much “writing” as sharing all their fleeting thoughts, ideas and brain farts.

Like an expanded version of Twitter.

But here’s the thing. I can only comment as a reader. Because honestly, I haven’t really tried writing short form. The idea of just dumping brain farts on the page and hitting publish is a weird concept to me. (Erm, where’s the editing?)

Maybe it’s because I don’t use Twitter?
Maybe if I used Twitter I’d be more comfortable writing short form?

But then, it makes me think of all the poets on Medium who say that it’s hard to earn anything with poetry because it’s all short form. Hard to make in income on 2 minute reads on a platform that pays for read time.

I’m not sure what to think. So I’m wondering…

Do you write short form? If yes, how’s it working?
Do you read short form? If yes, do you enjoy it?

What do you think of short form writing?

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More reading…

• If You Only Read One Book On Writing, Make it This One

• 3 Words That Weaken Your Writing.

• The Pied Piper Was Real: 130 Kids Disappeared & Never Came Back

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Did you know if you click the heart or leave a comment, Substack gives you stars for being responsive? You can’t see them, but I can. They make me happy. :)

Thanks for reading.

xo,
Linda