Yes I know, these last 2 posts have been long and complex - but that seems to have become the hallmark of this blog.
I’m surprised – if not slightly disappointed - that no one has told me to
try to keep things shorter and simpler! Particularly when I’ve
had the cheek to complain about the verbosity of others.
Long articles are, of course, easier
to write than short ones – most people write not to convey
meaning to others but to help them
clarify their own confused thinking….And I;m no exception. That’s indeed why I have the EM Foster quote
on my masthead –
How can I know what I think unless I see
what I write
And it is indeed one of the reasons I
continue this blog – I’ll be mid-way through writing a sentence and suddenly
realise that I did not properly understood the issue I had been all too confident about
in my mind. So even the first draft is the result of several rewrites to get
the right words to convey the meaning I want to give to an argument….
At that stage, of course, I should reread not just to see if it makes sense – but to see if the material could be shortened. It was Alexander Pope apparently whose 19th century poem went –
At that stage, of course, I should reread not just to see if it makes sense – but to see if the material could be shortened. It was Alexander Pope apparently whose 19th century poem went –
Words are like leaves, and where they
most abound
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely
found
But I have been reluctant to cut because I know I will use a lot of the
material later for one of the dozen or so E-books you can find in the top-right
corner of the blog. The blog gives me the raw material which I then work on and
recraft for these books. The blog is simply the means to this wider end
But that’s not really an excuse – since I have a Word file with all of
this year’s posts which I often use for subsequent editing. And, indeed, I am rarely happy with the initial post I hoist on the blog -
and will generally worry away at it and transpose amended text onto the blog
for at least the following 24 hours…The last post got this treatment with not
only clarifications but an introductory summary and reading list being added – resulting
of course in an even longer post!!
That’s why I inserted at the end of the post a heading – “Bottom Line” –
which at least tries to offer the reader a brief “takeaway” message….. When I managed training programmes, I would remind everyone of
the classic 3 step advice for effective presentations –
- Tell them what you are about to say
- Tell them
- Tell them what you’ve told them
Except that there’s too much telling there – effective training is more
interactive
Bottom Line
Some 2 years ago I started to use tables to make my thoughts more pithy and accessible – you can find one result in my book How
did Admin Reform get to be so sexy?
I will now try to make my posts shorter….indeed I’m even considering opening
a Twitter account to link to particular posts as part of a wider attempt to
increase the blog’s profile. I realise that the Twitter
universe is generally an unpleasant one but it is perhaps worth an experiment?
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