503 Posts

Position: Behind the Keyboard

Carol, Marlon and I broke the 500-blog barrier a couple of weeks ago. Including this one, between us we’ve published 503 posts and therefore missed the opportunity to draw parallels with the Indianapolis 500 motor race. Not that any comparison holds up under scrutiny. The Indy 500 is after all one of the fastest races in the world. Faster on average than most Formula 1 events by at least 20mph. That’s because Formula 1 races around cities with left- and right-hand turns, while the Indianapolis 500 takes only left-handers on a dedicated banked oval track. A typical race lasts about three hours.

When I was a kid I would watch the race on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. I don’t know why. I wasn’t a petrol head, per se. Perhaps it was the comfort of Jackie Stewart’s Scottish brogue as he narrated the turn-by-turn. Or perhaps it was Mario Andretti’s dogged attempts to recapture the glory of his 1969 win. He never won again. In an era where car designers had almost complete creative freedom his 1987 loss came at the hands of a faulty computer chip. Once again showing that it’s the little things in life that get us in the end.

A Snail’s Pace

Besides, reaching 500 entries has taken us the better part of nine years to complete. At that rate finishing the Indy 500 would take an average speed of 0.0063mph, or slower than a garden snail. That’s why motor racing is categorized as a sport, not, strictly speaking, a creative endeavor. Above are a few stats for the nerds among you.

All in all, if you started today and read silently at a pedestrian 225 words per minute you could read our entire blog in 30 hours and 29 minutes. At 411,691 words that’s about as long as the Lord of the Rings Trilogy or Gone with the Wind. And, no, you are correct, our posts have gotten longer over the years.

There’s a Book In There

The average work of adult fiction ranges from about 80,000 to 100,000 words. Science fiction and fantasy novels trend longer and mystery novels shorter. Business books run a paltry 50,000 – 70,000 words; so short on time are executives. That means writing a relatively short 820 words per week can lead to a full novel in just over two years. Like dropping grains of sand into an hourglass, if one is persistent enough you can write the great American novel in a few hours per week.

Christopher Hitchens in his memoir Hitch-22 said he wrote 1,500 publishable words every day. For any author that is a real day’s work. Every writer knows putting the first words on the page is only the first step in making something publishable. Editing generally takes two the three times longer than creating the first draft. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.” Of course, no work of great art is ever complete. Blogging provides a means for on-going editing that printed works do not.

Sausage Making

Our writing process reflects that reality. Once a post is drafted the editing begins with Microsoft Word’s read aloud function. This is particularly good for understanding flow and nailing down missing modifiers or additional definite articles. The kinds of things you grow blind to as the author/editor. Even reading aloud to yourself isn’t, for me, as effective. There’s nothing like the unemotional voice of the computer to highlight tortured syntax and missing words. The second step is to share previews with Carol, or she with me. That’s mostly a tone and ‘what the heck did I forget to include’ review.

After the first 120 or so posts, leaving words on the cutting room floor no longer mattered. There’s nothing more damaging to writing than being precious about a paragraph or two. Often whole sections get cut out and relegated to a pile of good ideas, wrong post. Some later become posts, many are simply permanently deleted. Occasionally our readers provide direct feedback, and we modify a post after publication. In general, editing continues for a day or two after the Mailchimp notification email goes out. Small tweaks that tighten things up.

Over to You

These days, as you’ll see from the chart, posts run about 900 – 1,000 words long. That’s about 5 minutes of reading. That seems about right. The entire process probably takes four hours, although posts with photos can sometimes take longer, due to the time it takes to edit the pictures and sort them in some meaningful way. If there is anything you, dear reader, would like more or less of, now is the time to speak up. We’d love to hear from you and, as I hope I’ve made clear, not in any way married to form, content, or frequency of publication. Thank you for reading. I hope the pleasure of reading our stories will give your lifespan back the 31 hours it’s taken from you so far.

With grateful thanks,

Mike, Carol and Marlon

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