Friday, August 15, 2014

The Perfect Blog Entry

I seem to miss every time for one basic reason.

I am informed by my author friends (many of whom I met through Facebook. It is useful for some things...) that a proper blog post is between 500 to 700 words in length. All you have to do is look below to note that I almost always violate this rule, and violate it intensely.

Now, it isn't that I don't want to grab, hold, and maintain the readers interest from start to finish. I hope I'm doing that regardless. It's just that some people aren't good at telling a story with an economy of words. Laconic, I'm not. Give me a break, I'm Irish-American. It isn't in my genetic code to be brief. We are known for our long, wandering tales replete with flights of fancy whether they belong there or not.

But I digress.

See, that's the excuse I usually use to bring myself back to the original point after I've taken one of those flights. One, it's a running gag. Two, once I've tapped out one of those flights (and if I think it's a good one), I just hate to go back and delete it. It feels like killing something that was just born and hasn't had its proper chance to amuse or at least annoy someone. Now, what I should do is cut those sections out, past them into my word processor, and save them for another entry. Yes, that would make good sense. Put some material up for a rainy day when I'm not feeling very blog-ish, and I'll have something I can grab and post. As you might have noticed, I've been very naughty and not posted here in some time. Everyone seems to have a busy life, but writing-wise, most of my attention goes to my three-book series in process, which is called The Price of Legend. Still, most of my author friends manage a blog post nearly every day. HOW?? Well, for one, they do limit it to 500 to 700 words. They also stick to just one thought, wrap it up, and they're done.

Grrrrr!

Therefore, I'm going to attempt to follow their lead, post often, and post entries more reasonable in length. It goes against my grain to do so, but I shall persevere. And cheat. If I find myself going long, why, I'll split the entry up into parts, and post them on successive days. So there. I just can't follow the rules, man.