Every post on this blog (except the individual poems) is exactly 500 words long. I started that when I first set it up – which I believe was two years ago (I’ll have to check). I keep an eye on the word count as I go, but sometimes when I get to the last sentence I have to go back and edit a bit to get the final total just right.
It’s quirky, I know, but it stops me going off into long rambling discourses which take half the day to complete. And… I want to be quirky. It satisfies my sense of myself. Also, I don’t go back and read what I wrote previously. While I’m in the process of writing, I prefer not to check what I’ve said, or look up information that would be easy to find (like when I started this blog or the name of that Bob Dylan song – it’s ‘When the Deal Goes Down’, if you’re interested). Quirky, right?
I suppose that’s because I don’t take this writing malarkey seriously, and that’s largely because I really don’t expect anyone to read it – however much I paste it on Facebook and Twitter, I can’t force it down people’s throats. And that gives me a lot of freedom to write what I want, how I want.
About the same time I started blogging, in autumn 2005, I also started a creative writing course, which ran on Monday mornings for two ten week terms a year. I did it for four years, and in about the second or third year the subject of blogging came up, in the context of the relationship between truth, fiction, factual writing, literary truth etc (at that time ‘fake news’ had not been invented, though there was already a lot of it flying about, and if it had been, it would certainly have been on the syllabus). The tutor said that blogs were fundamentally dishonest because online you can claim to be anyone, with the implication that all bloggers contrive to make themselves sound more interesting than they actually are. I argued that on the contrary, I am more open and honest about myself, my failings and insecurities on my blog than anywhere else, because of the freedom inherent in writing rather than speech (which requires direct social interaction, with a listener who may respond in any number of ways – actually, I think that might be a good topic for another time.)
Quickly glancing at the word count, I realise that I need to wrap things up, and I still haven’t got to the point I was thinking of when I sat down, which is this: yesterday I know I ended with two rhetorical questions, on the lines of: should I go for a walk or should I do housework? In case anyone thought these were genuine questions, the answer is that I did neither (though I did start cutting the hedge). But now I think I’ll have to leave that hanging again…