When I was writing a newspaper column about condominium living I was told that it should be no more than a thousand words. Not having written much for publication at that time I thought a thousand words would take me forever, that is if I could even write that many words. Or perhaps, I thought what if I simply had to write two thousand or three thousand words to say what I wanted to say? It was a good discipline for me to have to focus my thoughts and condense them into 1,000 words so that they were readable and yet made sense.
As I made my way through seminary and two, then four, then ten, then twenty page papers for this professor or that professor, the concept of a thousand words was lost. No more to focus in, hone your thoughts, and be clear and succinct. Papers for professors required so many more words, with the exception of one – my homiletics professor. Ten minutes was the ideal time for a sermon. I quickly learned that one hundred words equaled about a minute of preaching. Aha! My thousand word discipline was paying off in fashioning an almost perfect ten minute sermon. Mind you, the sermon may not have been perfect, but the timing was impeccable.
And then, along came blogs and emails and Facebook and, OMG, Twitter. Blogs could go on and on, but I found myself attracted to those that were short and sweet. Emails were best at about a hundred words. Facebook, maybe fifty. The real challenge though was Twitter with its 140 characters. Not words, characters, as in A, B, C, 1, 2, 3….spaces, commas, even periods counted. Although Twitter is fast becoming only “headlines,” it is disciplining people to write in a short, concise, and focused manner.
Out of curiosity I decided to cut and paste my favorite blogs into MSWord – meaning, those that actually held my interest and said something meaningful – and see how many words they contained. Almost without exception they were in the vicinity of five hundred (500) words or less. The most recent one was from The Geranium Farm and in 428 words Barbara Crafton captured the essence of rain.
For over a year now I have been mulling around the idea of creating my own blog. But what to write about, what subject, how long, what shall I name it? I am a priest; should I write about God or godliness? I am a woman; should I write about feminism? I am a crone (I crossed the 70-year old mark this year); should I write about the elderly or aged? Actually, I like being a crone – it liberates me. I am an opinionated individual, and I realized I can write about many things. But, only if they are five hundred words – more or less. And, so, here I am with my first blog and I am calling it “Words from The Crone.” Hope you enjoy it!
Tags: Writing