The Long Form

I have a Label for posts on this blog called "The Short Form." It's a result of being out for a walk, and turning over an idea for a post in my head. Eventually, I'd turned it over so many times that I'd worn it down to the bare kernel of the idea. Finding that kernel succinct and to the point, I posted it, with a little commentary.

Many of The Short Form posts are images. I think because they take up more space that way, and so it didn't seem so much like simply skipping out on posting. In hindsight, I think that was a mistake, because, to a degree, The Short Form is a demonstration of what I wanted this exercise in weblogging to do - make me a better writer. And isn't being able to distill what could easily have been hundreds of words into two sentences a mark of a good (or at least decent) writer? But instead, it felt like a cop-out.

This all came to mind because I was reading a post on Aeon.co about keeping secrets. It's 3,400 words. But a lot of it could have been dispensed with, had the author started with this:

If you keep a secret entirely to yourself, then you are leaving yourself only one avenue to work through the secret, and that is in your own thinking. And, unfortunately, a mind unchecked by others’ reactions is more likely to develop unhealthy ways of thinking. The hard part of having a secret is not that we have to hide it in conversation, but that we have to live with it alone.

One of the best ways to reduce the harm of a secret is to talk to someone about it. You don’t have to reveal the secret to the person you are keeping it from, but I find in my research that discussing a secret with a trusted other can make the world of difference. Someone who will be kind, empathic and nonjudgmental will serve you well here.

To be sure, most of the article prior to this point describes the author's research, and after this point, it's about alternatives to having a trusted confidant. Still, the whole feels about 3,000 words longer than it needs to be to effectively make the author's points.

The internet is effectively infinite (especially when one doesn't have to pay for one's own server space). So I understand the lack of constraint that leads people, including myself, to be unnecessarily verbose. So maybe it's time that I put a little more work into employing The Short Form more often.