{"id":4563,"date":"2008-09-09T04:23:01","date_gmt":"2008-09-08T22:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indiauncut.com\/?p=2986"},"modified":"2008-09-09T04:23:01","modified_gmt":"2008-09-08T22:53:01","slug":"on-short-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indiauncut.com\/on-short-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"On Short Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"
Arjun Swarup<\/a> writes in to point me to “Haiku Nation”,<\/a> a piece on short-format writing that he says made him think of me:<\/p>\n Short is in. Online Americans, fed up with e-mail overload and blogorrhea, are retreating into micro-writing. Six-word memoirs. Four-word film reviews. Twelve-word novels. Mini-lit is thriving.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It’s an interesting piece, but I couldn’t see why it made Arjun think of me. So I asked him. “Because one of your key points about good writing,” he replied, “one that you have frequently commented upon, is to keep it short, simple and concise.”<\/p>\n I clarified: “My point isn’t that good writing is short, but that it is no longer than necessary.”<\/p>\n Small formats have their value, but if a piece of writing is so short that it does not get to the meat of the matter, then it is too long. And while I love the six-word Hemingway story everybody cites (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”), I’d rather read “The Old Man And The Sea” than 100 stories like that.<\/p>\n But that’s just me.<\/p>\n Also read<\/b>: an old essay of mine on short attention spans, “Beautiful Scatty Minds.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arjun Swarup<\/a> writes in to point me to “Haiku Nation”,<\/a> a piece on short-format writing that he says made him think of me:<\/p>\n Short is in. Online Americans, fed up with e-mail overload and blogorrhea, are retreating into micro-writing. Six-word memoirs. Four-word film reviews. Twelve-word novels. Mini-lit is thriving.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It’s an interesting piece, but I couldn’t see why it made Arjun think of me. So I asked him. “Because one of your key points about good writing,” he replied, “one that you have frequently commented upon, is to keep it short, simple and concise.”<\/p>\n I clarified: “My point isn’t that good writing is short, but that it is no longer than necessary.”<\/p>\n Small formats have their value, but if a piece of writing is so short that it does not get to the meat of the matter, then it is too long. And while I love the six-word Hemingway story everybody cites (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”), I’d rather read “The Old Man And The Sea” than 100 stories like that.<\/p>\n But that’s just me.<\/p>\n Also read<\/b>: an old essay of mine on short attention spans, “Beautiful Scatty Minds.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,13,23],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
\n