Twitter

I've been using Twitter a lot recently. Something about the 140-character limit on each post is refreshing. When I blog on CoK or IVIC, I tend to be exceedingly long-winded, primarily because I want to be clear. I think, though, that it's probably relatively unlikely for people to read posts topping out at around five single-spaced pages. Twitter, then, is a good exercise for me.

Actually, it's more than that, I think. It's a good exercise for anyone who takes the practice of writing seriously. The downfall of many an author, many a blogger and many an anecdote is a lack of brevity. It's easy to get caught up in one's own words. Microblogging teaches the control of one's typographical sphincter (to prevent verbal diarrhea, naturally).

There's still some to be desired, of course: one cannot espouse a deep philosophical treatise in 140 characters. I have CoK and IVIC for that, though, where I can, and now I know to keep it short and understandable. The short of this post, then, is to convince myself to blog again, and to remind myself to split long ideas up so that people can actually digest them. What good is a treatise no one reads?

By my hand,
~Michael Akerman