Being concise with words

You know, words are funny. They’re the currency of thought, sure, but they can also be a real trap. They can box us into clichés and banalities, hiding the truth and numbing our imagination. We end up wasting time and energy on trivial stuff while ignoring what really matters. Words can fool us into thinking we’ve said something when we’ve said nothing at all.

I like reading blogs to see what people think and feel, and to learn from their insights. But man, I often get frustrated with how verbose and irrelevant many bloggers are. They seem to think they need to fill up the page with words, even when they have nothing to say. They start with these long-winded introductions that state the obvious or just repeat what everyone already knows. They ramble about their personal lives, their opinions, their feelings, and never really get to the point. It bores me with details I don’t care about or could easily find elsewhere.

I have a blog too, but I don’t write on it as much as I’d like. One reason is that I don’t want to fall into the same trap as those bloggers. I don’t want to write just for the sake of writing or to please anyone but myself. I don’t want to use words as a crutch or a mask. I want to use them as a tool, a weapon. I want to express myself clearly and concisely, to convey my thoughts and feelings with precision and power.

I’m into short story writing, and that’s what my blog is for. I want to experiment with different styles and techniques, to see how much I can say with how little. I want to challenge myself and my readers, to make them think and feel something new. I want to write stories that are short in form but long in meaning.

I guess all this rambling was to say just that.

“Brevity is the soul of wit.” – William Shakespeare