Writing less can take more, much more, time

In his Lettres Provinciales, the French philosopher 

and mathematician Blaise Pascal famously wrote: 

“I would have written a shorter letter, 

but I did not have the time.”  

In the second year of my master’s in applied communication, the 50+ students divided quite naturally into two streams: Those who had a core question they wanted to investigate with research and writing into a full-length thesis, and those who preferred to take a broader approach with a selection of courses and one long paper. I was in the second group.

For the life of me, I could not come up with one sole question to hold my focus for the final year of study. Instead, one of the profs helped me translate my frustration at the often obtuse and dense articles we had to read into a short-term investigation of discourse conventions across different disciplines. In plain English, this means I investigated how a research paper written by scientists (about the link between exposure to light, production of melatonin, and growth of breast cancer cells) changed in language and structure when it was written up by a journalist as an article in The Globe and Mail newspaper.

This assignment captured my interest: Not only would I learn about communication conventions in different disciplines, but I would need to translate my learning only into a long paper not a full-blown thesis. That paper, combined with a number of courses throughout my second year, would add to the credits needed for the degree.

I happily worked my way through the courses and then turned my attention in my final term to the research and writing of my paper, which I did over a 10-day period tucked away alone at our cottage in early March of 2006. We had only dial-up internet back then so, apart from the view (see photo) and occasional deer trekking through the yard, I had no distractions. I loved the intensive nature of the work, at the end of which I had a 25-page paper: head down, total immersion, laser focus, done, resurface.  

I have been thinking about that long ago writing experience as I have been exploring my writing life these past 15 or so months.

There is a lot of hype in the larger writing world suggesting that every writer’s goal must surely be to produce a book, a book being the ultimate goal, the final proof that one is a Writer. Really? Books are great; I love them, but, actually, writing one is not my ultimate goal. My goal is to hone my skill at writing flash-length pieces —1,000 words or significantly fewer. In fact, last week, I had my first 50-word story published and I loved the process of creating that tiny piece of fiction. It’s hard, to be sure, to write short, but it’s a challenge I happily rise to: first the idea, then the drafting, then the crafting of the tiny story. I call it fun. 

Short means choosing the one near-perfect image or experience around which the piece of writing can be built and then playing at the word level to fit the constraint of the word count. That’s the writing work I love: hyper focusing on the language and the interplay of story and structure. When I’ve done it well, the reader need make only a short-term commitment to experience what I have created. 

As a writing friend said the other day, “I’m 65 and getting older. I don’t have time to read long anymore; give me short.” Indeed. In July, my first 100-word micro memoir will be published, and I aim for my weekly blogposts to be about 500 or so words. Short enough, I think, even for that writing friend.

By all means, write a thesis or a book if you wish, and enjoy the process and the product. But, for the moment at least, I’ll stay on my own writing path where few words create big impact. I hope.

Micro memoir example (not the one forthcoming in July)

Unexpected stop: Instinct kicked in. I slammed my elbow hard on the auto door lock. CLICK went all four. I rammed the shift into reverse. BACK went the car. But the guy kept coming towards us. As if to walk right onto the hood and over us. Then, suddenly, he veered off and crossed the street, kept walking to where he was going. Where? My heartbeat returned to normal. I shifted and drove to where we were going. What had started out a normal errand run got lodged in memory as close call. As state of the world. Not normal at all.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.