The Leo Tolstoy of Bloggers

That's me.

[Writer's note to readers of my other blog: This is a repost from PWAW. I thought it would be an appropriate way to start off a blog called "Long, Involved Stories." New material to come. Soon. --KB]

I have made every effort to write shorter blog posts in the hopes of giving my readers a quick laugh, a brief respite, and then allow them to go. But I'm giving up on that.

You know how in some card games—like Bridge, Spades, Hearts—one must, at the outset of each hand, bid either high or low, depending on how many tricks they think they'll take? Well, some bloggers can bid low in the word-count game. I'm going to have to bid high.

I worked up some statistics this morning.

What novel do Americans most often use as the measuring stick for length? Yes, that's right: Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. It's the bellwether of word count, as far as we are concerned. However, weighing in at just 560,000 words, it comes in at a distant 15th compared to other novels. (This is purely word count, not page count. It's possible, if you use really long words—as Tolstoy usually does—to have a higher page count than an author who trumps you on word count.)

I apparently should've been born French. French novels come in as the top three word-count books, with Artamene (a whopping 2,100,000 words), Les Hommes de Bonne Volonte (a close also-ran at 2,070,000. Goof grief, Jules Romains! Another 35,000 words and you'd have had the record!). But after the top three spots, the English definitely have it, claiming seven of the top 10 slots. So I guess I'm onto something. By the way, for those of you who have slogged through Hugo's Les Miserables, it comes in at a very lightweight 513,000 words. So if you want to read a really long novel in English, go find Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (number four, with 969,000 words in the first edition, but upgraded to over one million words in its third edition). But if you really want to be considered a heavyweight reader, learn French.

Compared to the above stats, I'm definitely a lightweight writer. But compared to most bloggers, I definitely measure up at least to Tolstoy. As I said before, I've really tried to shorten my posts. I've also read other people's blogs and admired their concise, pithy posts that fit easily on one page on my tiny 13-inch laptop screen, without scrolling. I've tried, but I just can't do it. I'm many things, but concise isn't one of them. And for those who might say that I am pithy, I'd argue that though I sometimes might act “pithed off,” I'm hardly terse and to-the-point.

At any rate, I think that at this point, I'm just going to give in to my wordiness, bid high, and hang the consequences (the consequences being that no one but the stalwart will want to read my posts). I've tried to bid low, but even my “short” posts are long by others' standards.

My longest post, I think, was the “two kinds of people” one, which I split into two posts, to try to trick people into thinking it was shorter. Total word count: 1,729.

So, then, I decided to try some shorter posts. One of these was my post about Larry Niven's extremely short story, called “Unfinished Story.” Niven's short story was a total of 10 words long. It took me 288 words to tell you about it.

Next, I thought that I could quickly write about my favorite quotation in “The Human Condition.” It was a short little quotation that required some set-up. Word count: 658.

Then, yesterday, while eating lunch, I was thinking about this problem of my posts being so long. I looked at the salad I was eating and thought, “I should write about lettuce; that couldn't possibly be very long.” I was thinking that I would just literally write about my lunch and keep it really short. I haven't posted that story yet, but it came in at 1,105 words!

So there you have it. I may not be in the same category as the old French novelists, but I do seem to weigh in around the Tolstoy level. For blogs, that is. (Word count of this post: about 699.)

Sit back and set a spell...

I write the way I talk. Long, winding sentences that go on forever, interrupted by parenthetical comments, by clauses that describe--not necessarily in a charitable way--a person's character or traits, punctuated with pieces of backstory, and lots of meandering (more than likely unnecessary) details.

When we were teenagers, my brother K used to say of me, "Kathy is the only person I know who can summarize the plot of a 30-minute TV show in an hour." Yep. That's me.

Some people absolutely hate my stories. These are busy people, usually mathematically or scientifically inclined people (accountants, engineers, and the like). They are bottom-line people who want me to just cut to the chase, leave out all of the details, and just tell the end of the story. They want results, not history. They probably get more done in a day than I do in two weeks. They are not very much fun to be around. I avoid them. And they will want to avoid this blog.

Some people absolutely love my stories. These are people who have a little time on their hands, who like to sit on the porch with Mason jars of freshly made iced tea, people who majored in the humanities and liberal arts--or just as likely, didn't go to college at all, which is fine by me. They tend to be mechanics, social workers, teachers, government workers, and, occasionally, homeless. They have the time to listen to follow me down rabbit trails, to savor suspense, to listen closely, to begin to speculate about how it will all end. They would never cut me short and say, "So, are you saying that the car is totaled?" or, "Did you call the plumber about this?" No, they are people who know how to wait patiently to hear how a story unfolds, maximizing their delight at the end.  These people are detail-oriented, relational, people-focused. They just enjoy the company of others. They love animals. They are not very productive, maybe, but they're having a much better time during their visit to Planet Earth than the pinch-faced misers described previously. You know the kind I'm talking about: nice people. I am attracted to them like a magnet. Some of them have encouraged me to write my stories just the way I tell them in person. Perhaps a few people like that will like this blog.

This introductory post is the shortest post that will ever appear in this blog, I assure you. From now on, all posts will be long and involved. I guarantee it.