--- In [email protected], Duveyoung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Also, just to be real, when I post something, DAMMIT I WANT > TO SEE ITS TITLE FOR AT LEAST A FEW HOURS on the first page > of the message board. When someone posts obsessively, all > the other posts are pushed lower on the lists, and, I, as > a writer who puts a lot of time into the posts, find that > it hurts, sniff sniffle, to become off-page so quickly. > Sue me, but it's a big reason for my voting for the five > post rule.
Color me cackling incontrollably at this, drawing unwanted attention from the other cafe patrons. :-) > As for not having five important things to say per day...yeah > right...like that's true -- I don't know if it's true or not. I just found myself considering that as a real possibility -- especially with regard to my own posts -- and then posing it as a question to the group. What caused me to entertain the idea was going back and rereading some of the posts I felt compulsive about when I wrote them, as if I really "had" to write what I was writing. What I found was that they were often the *least* interesting things I'd written that day, or that week. So I wondered if anyone else felt the same way. > ...the problem is that really handling a concept with > integrity requires bringing one's attention, again and > again, to the subject at hand and note the new ideas > that springboard off the central topic. This fleshing > out takes a lot of dedication, rereading, editing, and > passion for the material. While I don't disagree with what you say in the least, just as another point of view I've found that with the five-post limit I'm more able to do all of that *in one post*. Instead of dragging the "train of thought" out over several posts, I tend these days to *try* to think it through the first time around, as much as possible. Then, if a few hours later I still find myself thinking about the subject, I might add more, if it really needs saying. And, on rereading the posts made this way, I'm finding that the single, thought-through posts are often doing a far better job of expressing what I wanted to say than the series of six or seven shorter stream-of-consciousness posts I used to write in the past when on similar rants. For the record, I for one have noticed the care that you seem to put into your posts, and appreciate it. Most of them are single-topic, and do a good job of exploring several sides of that topic, while often being damned funny. (The last phrase is the highest compliment I can bestow on another writer, BTW.) > As a writer, I'm always wanting to put something down that > resonates for at least the near future. Not that it's relevant, but for some reason this reminds me of a great Woody Allen line, "I don't want to attain immortality through my work; I want to attain it by not dying." :-) Here's another possibly-apocryphal "writer story" that I've heard bandied about as a kind of in-office urban legend. Guy spends days working on a report for his boss, and finally turns it it in. It's eight pages long. A few hours later, he gets it back in the office mail along with a note from his boss saying, "Nice, but it's too long. Cut it in half." The guy goes back to the drawing board, cuts line after line of superfluous verbiage that isn't really superfluous, and turns in a four-page version of the same post. It comes back again, with a note that says, "It's better, but still not right. Cut it in half again." The guy freaks. *Nothing* can be cut out and still say what he needs to say. But he takes the report home and works on it all night and by morning, he has a version that is only two pages long. He takes it to his boss' office and turns it in personally. The boss looks at it and says, "Two pages, right?" The guy says proudly, "Yes." The boss says, "Great. I'll read it this time." The five-post limit has been a similar kind of writing lesson for me. I just try to eliminate all those annoying iterations...
