"How Long Is 'Too Long'?"

In the tradition of answering questions nobody asked me.

Except me.

My first professional writing job – at age 24 – was a two-year stint, providing weekly columns for a Toronto newspaper.  (Oops.  I just mistakenly typed “a two-year stink.”  Those letters are not even that close on the keyboard.)

At the paper, they told me the “top limit” on length was 700 words.  So I wrote 700 words.  I actually counted them before delivering my copy.  (Sometimes, I’d lose my place and have to frustratingly start over, the repeated counting taking longer than actually writing the column.  Not really, but it was definitely less fun.)

Later, I did pieces of national radio.  (Providing “comedy bits”, some of the silly; others, more frequently, with a “point.”)  The stated requirement:  “Three minutes, and ‘out.’”  I’d time them at home, when I was practicing.

I also wrote and performed – I get a special “jolt” including “performed” – a series of radio commercials for a local delicatessen.  They had to be sixty seconds, precisely.  One of my “takes” came in at 59 seconds.  I had to record it again, determining how to make my performance precisely one second longer.

And, of course, there were the half-hour comedies down here, whose lengths – as time went on and the networks got greedier – diminishing from 24 minutes to 21 minutes, and change.  (Providing more time for commercials.)  What did not vary was, whatever the temporal “ceiling”, you had, without exception or argument, to “Fade Out.”

Wherever I worked, I found these “boundaried constrictions” on space (in the newspaper) and on time (everywhere else.)

And I liked that.

‘Cause that’s the kind of person I am – a “slavish adherent to ‘The Rules’.”

Following my natural proclivity – and “orders” – wherever I worked, I dutifully “colored within the lines.”

And then, I began blog writing.

No boundaries. 

(Note:  We are not talking about content.  There are no boundaries there, either.  But, hey, it’s me.   How “far afield” am I going to go?)

There I was.  With no “limiting guidelines.”

Oh, my.

Not a paralyzing “Oh, my” – “No boundaries” and I curl into a ball. 

“And he never wrote anything again.”  

Despite the “No boundaries” in blog writing, I believed I could handle it, by allowing each post to be “as long as it needed to be” and no longer, going entirely by “feel.”

Boy, can a person be fooled.

Or, more precisely, fool themselves.

“Oh!  I need to include this!”  “Oh!  I have to clarify that!”  “It needs a modifying descriptive.”  “It needs an additional word for ‘rhythm’.”  “Oh!  This reminds me of that!  “‘Interesting Side-Trip’?  Why not?”  “Let’s throw this in for fun.”  Oh, and this ‘structural framework’, delivering ‘context and shape.’”

With that approach, each succeeding draft I wrote – till my recent “Awakening” – became longer and longer.  To my startled surprise and chagrin.

“I only ate one cracker.  Really?  I ate twenty?”

Shameful Confession:  Over the years, I published every post, believing it was “exactly the right length.”

And I was wrong every time.

(I received ignored proof of this “insidious bloat” when a posts was requested for “outside publication.”  Re-reading it before final submission, I’d belatedly think, “Do I really need that?”, invariably realizing I didn’t.  It is possible I don’t actually need this.)

In the end, referencing the song in the play and film Enter Laughing,

“It’s up to you to do the ha-cha-cha.”

With a pointed emphasis on “you.”

Contrasting the other arenas I worked in – with their strict instructions about “length” – when writing a blog, the buck stops unwaveringly right here.  If my posts progressively “bulk up”, it is inescapably “on me” to, as they say in half-hour sitcom writing, “Kill my babies”, a tasteless allusion to ruthlessly taking stuff – once deemed “thoroughly indispensible” – out.

The duty to assiduously “monitor length” conjures the culminating lyric from “O, Canada.”

“We stand on guard for thee.”

Hey, I grew up there.

It is naturally in me to do that.

Wait.  Do I really need “naturally”?

Oh, and what about “really”?

“Do I need the word ‘naturally’?”

Wait.  I just added two words.

Hmph.

This thing is going to be tough.

Wait.  Do I really need “thing”?