azdavis.netPostsRSS

Write more, but less

I read two different posts (one, two) recently, both of which can be summed up as: write more, but less.

That is: write more things, but have each thing be shorter. This has a few key benefits.

First, it lowers the barrier for writing something. Instead of worrying about whether you can write enough about whatever it is you want to write about, just write, and don’t worry if it turns out short.

Second, it makes reading things easier. People are busy, and generally don’t have a lot of time to spend on any one thing. The longer your thing is, the more likely a potential reader will just skip it.

Third, keeping something short forces you, the writer, to distill what you want to say down to its essence. Paraphrasing a quote from both Blaise Pascal and Mark Twain:

Sorry for not writing a shorter letter; I didn’t have time, so I wrote a longer one instead.

I’d also offer as a closing though that sometimes, a longer-form “deep dive” is the right move. It may depend on what the audience of your work is, or how much detail you want to go into. Or it might just be your preferred style.