People argue about what this means but for me I am using the definition that says its meaning is "a good piece of writing, or a good speech should be brief and concise."
Even though I have this blog and post to it seldom, it is on my mind most days. In the daily creation of my website I come upon so many subjects I would love to expand upon and write about. (My site consists of 99% links to other websites with little personal commentary.) But I find myself reluctant to do so as I feel I need a certain length of content to make it notable. But as of late that premise has come into question for me.
On my website I have a small page titled “In Brief” with its stated intent of, "In Brief is a new page where I will post short blurbs, commentary and opinions on many things that will come and go on a regular basis. Even though I have Kether Muse Blog some things just need a moment." Recently a friend wrote a Facebook message to me that said, "It seems like a lot of work to go though, just to create a blog of posts that are shorter than the rest. You can put tiny messages in your regular blog, and it will keep them in context. Rather than create a separate page, I would simply tag your short posts with “in brief” and maybe have a link in your menu to everything with that tag. Just my thoughts."
Well I have been taking her words into consideration and to heart. While doing so I have noticed that many well known and constantly visited web sites are full of articles that actually are rather small. For instance, randomly picked for this post, is an article titled "Survey: Children Spend Less Time Outdoors Than Prison Inmates" from the website “Earth We Are One” (from their website "10+ Million Monthly Readers") accessed from the very popular Facebook site “Peaceful Warrior”. This article has only 839 words. For “brevity's” sake I will not pull out any more examples and get on with the point of this post.
I have been told before that sometimes I offer too much information when speaking, especially when I am in conversation on a subject I am passionate about. I wear folks out and that is not good for communication, even though I attempt to be conscious of Thich Nhat Hanh's advise on Deep Listening and Loving Speech. But that is a subject in it's self for another time.
For better or worse the new paradigm is that people want their internet content to be shorter. Sites like Long Form are often passed over choosing instead "fluff" journalism sites such as BuzzFeed, Gawker and Cracked. Now at this point I am inclined to want to go off on a diatribe about the "Dumbing Down" of America". But “Brevity-Brevity”.
I receive emails from an organization called Freedom With Writing and muse on writing stories/articles for others to make a little much needed extra cash. But what stops me is the same stumbling block of whether articles in my mind would be good enough. I'm beginning to think. “Maybe they are.” I read an article and think, "I could have given that subject more justice." Then my negative programing jumps up again. I could use a good session with Byron Katie and ask, "Is it True".
So in closing two more points. Perhaps I will take down my “In Brief” (link may become broken) page and focus more on my blog. And secondly, I am getting so sick of all the films about Jesus where he portrayed as a white dude like some Venice beach hippie, but brevity redirects me from that thought too(for now).
(By the way, this post has 1292 words in it.)
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