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A Chicago area girl born and bred, I've lived in Mississippi, Montana, Michigan, and...ten years in the wilds of northeastern Indiana, where I fought the noble fight as a book editor. Now, I'm back in Illinois once more...for good. (At least I intend to make it that way!)
Showing posts with label experts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label experts. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

K.I.S.S.

I have been, with great glee and malice aforethought, violating one of the key principles of blogging: I’ve written loooooooong pieces that take awhile to read. This, my friends, is a no-no. At least according to most blogging experts out there. (Never mind the oxymoronic idea of "blogging experts" when Microsoft doesn’t even recognize “blog” as a word yet. If the Evil Empire says what you do is not a word, can you still be an expert?) Anyway, these self-proclaimed experts explain to us now that people accustomed to doing things online have very, very short attention spans. Think “gnat.” Now, a gnat doesn’t hang around for very long in any one place. It’s got places to fly, people to annoy, crevices to hide in. Apparently, the same is true of most people reading blogs. (Well, okay, maybe they don’t fly much, but a lot of ‘em hide in crevices—that much is apparent by reading their comments. The “annoying” part goes without saying.) They have little time to “waste” sitting down reading a long, drawn-out piece of wisdom. Hit ‘em fast, hit ‘em with valuable information right off the bat, because their eyeballs aren’t going to be on your site for longer than 16.8 seconds before they lose patience and they’re off to the next click. Unless, of course, your blog says anything about scandal, gossip, links where people can get FREE STUFF, or is so inflammatory that people spend longer than 16.8 seconds just so they can click into your comments section and tell you what an idiot you are (language cleaned up for the sake of all of us). So my blog is breaking all the rules. Because this entry, as you can see, is already too long. You’ve probably already lost patience with me and are saying, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, she’s babbling again, get the woman some Prozac.” Well, you might be right. I am babbling. But it’s because I’m in a particularly snarky mood this morning, it’s Wednesday and I don’t want to be here at work checking other people’s stuff when I could be writing my own. It’s also blazing ridiculously hot, I had to stop on my way out to work this morning to clean catstuff off the carpet (eeewww), and… Yeah, I know. Prozac. Anyway, to keep this short and sweet: those of you who have my website address on your links may need to change it shortly…I’m changing web page providers, redoing everything, and that old link was supposed to expire as of July 31. Which, as we can see by the clock on the wall, has passed, and it’s bloomin’ August already. Which is as good a time as any, considering it’s my birthday month and all, to give myself the present of a new website. In the meantime, please tell everybody you know to come over here to Catholic Writer Chick and they can browse to their gnats’ eyes’ content! But what do you really think? Is short the only way to go? Or is there still a group of people out there who want to read steak, not sizzle, and don’t mind knowing there’s a blog or two out here with substance to it? Who don’t mind pouring a cup of coffee, clicking on the link, and seeing what diabolical stuff the CWC is up to today? (This is a hint. Tell everyone you know to come over here. Oh, did I say that already?) :-) Let me know. In the meantime, stay tuned for some chatter about What We’re (Trying To) Read At The Moment… Write on! Janny