I read a post from Fandango this morning which drew out the number cruncher in me and got my mind thinking.
I’m a windbag, gasbag, chatterbox, aka I talk a lot. Or at least I used to.
At school, I wrote a lot on subjects that interested me, which to be honest weren’t that many. A couple of times I did thirty page essays, and in hindsight I wonder if the teacher actually read them and just handed out the Star for effort.
Regular readers know I’m an old hand at writing letters. These days the heart is willing but the hands are stiff with arthritic nobbly joints, yet I still do it occasionally, though they’re a far cry from the 16 to 20 page letters I used to write to Mum years ago.
My longest letter was 67 sides, to a guy in the army stationed in Ireland when I was about 15. I could say it was small paper and my writing was big, but it was a standard A5 writing pad (I used over half of it) and my writing was of average size. I hope he enjoyed reading it, however many days it took to get to the end.
Fandango’s data and how he has modified his blogs was interesting, so out of curiosity I looked my figures up.
Like him, when I first started my blog, my posts were long. I don’t remember getting a TL;NR comment though, just not many likes and very little traffic.
I have to admit length can put me off as I lose interest, the thread or the plot before I’m halfway through.
This is a partial screen print of my figures since I started in September 2013:
Like Fandango, I’ve cut back on my word content, and most of the challenges I do now are word counted anyway which helps.
Wonder if I’ll crack the half million by the end of the year?
pensitivity101 
This is a terrific post. Very helpful to the growing blogger. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Laura.
How did you calculate these stats? I personally can’t write very long posts, neither can I read them. They take too much time!
They’re on the Insights section of the stats page, and you scroll down to the current figures and view all.
Okay. Thanks
Wow, you’ve become even more concise over the years than me!
It’s the challenges, makes me more concise than waffle. Your challenge is helping with my vocabulary, so I’m learning all the time!
Awesome, I had never considered how length would affect readings. I just tend to write what I like and I try to keep every thing under 500 words just because it’s hard for me to read over that much. I do read longer pieces quite a bit but it takes a lot of focus on my part and I LOVE the flash fiction challenges!
Sometimes I get carried away and it creeps up to around 700 words, especially doing one of my budget posts which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea
I hear ya, if my own eyes start to glaze over half way through proofing, I do some pretty ruthless editing. 😉
wow! 67 sides, you were really inspired, but I guess when we are teenagers the words flow easily in a letter. Nowadays we are so busy and there are many blogs to visit that a short and concise post is much better.
I doubt I could even manage 10 now, and that would be big writing on small paper.!
I have seen TL;DR before and I didn’t know what it meant either. This is why I love entering flash fiction competitions – it forces you to be brief.
I’ve always been a waffler, so it’s good for me too.