humor

I’ve had my concerns about blogging of course. Who hasn’t?

What is the impact on the planet, when every day millions of us use thousands of words, almost without thinking, as if the supply was never-ending?

There are those who claim that the word is a re-usable resource, and that we have enough words to last the next 100 years … by then, they say, we’ll have discovered new channels of communication. But my private research indicates an approaching crisis: each time a word is used, it loses a fraction of its original lustre and intensity, gradually diminishing until it becomes a meaningless black hole.

Here’s the evidence. In just 50 years, the life-expectancy of words has been reduced by a factor of 4. In the 1950s, the average reader struggled to understand Shakespeare and the King James Bible, but was comfortable with Dickens – so words had a half-life of about 200 years. For most of today’s readers, Dickens is impenetrable – and that’s a half-life of not much more than 50 years.

My fear is that with the explosive growth of blogging and the uncontrolled use of words, the rate of decay will accelerate until, in a matter of a few years, words will become meaningless even before they are written. All blogs – and even tweets – would be reduced to unintelligible mumbo-jumbo.

As a writer and blogger therefore, I feel I have a responsibility to the planet – to plant a new word for every thousand I consume. You may have noticed ‘macronym’ yesterday – an acronym using two or three letters of each word instead of just the initial; my example was ‘NaPoWriMo‘ – National Poetry Writing Month.

Here’s my contribution for today.

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gread [gri:d] verb transitive or intransitive | p. gread [gred] | pp. gread [gred]

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If you thought word-decay was a problem, greading is a potential catastrophe. Because it kills writers and bloggers. Kills them with kindness.

This is how it goes. Annie joins a group including 200 other bloggers. Filled with optimism and good intentions, she tweets everyone in the group, subscribes to their blogs. Many of them reciprocate, and for the first few days, Annie’s on a high. But following the TwitFace Plan, her days are filled, and there’s no time to keep up with her new friends. Day by day, there are fewer responses, and before long, she’s writing mainly for her own pleasure once again, not anyone else’s.

Ed’s a writer determined to connect with as many readers as possible, so he decides to eliminate all price barriers to his novel. He’s interested, he says, in engaging with readers for the long term. Making money isn’t important right now. He offers his work for free, and is delighted with the sudden response. His books are ‘selling’ like never before. He waits a week or two for the reviews and the praise to start flowing. But they don’t. Because his books have been downloaded with hundreds of others, and the first page has never been opened.

For anyone who writes, only two things are important. Coffee and Attention. (I suppose I could add Money too, but if that’s a primary interest, you might do better getting a job in publishing, or setting up as an agent.)

A few weeks later Annie is playing Farmville; Ed has taken up online gambling. Hopes raised, then dashed – because of greading.

But, my fellow TwitFacers, never fear. Now we’ve named the problem, we can understand it. And with understanding comes the solution. A distinctively TwitFace solution, which will benefit you, your family and the world community of writers.

Here’s the issue, you see: when everyone’s a writer, nobody’s a reader. We’re all just greaders. That’s all there’s time for. Tell me, truthfully. Are you a real reader, or a blogger making the effort to read? Aren’t you a greader too? Not just a little?

So here we all are, greading furiously. 30 million bloggers and 1 million writers … but wait! That’s not everyone! What about the other 6,878,887,629 people who don’t blog or write? Perhaps they’re not all your LinkedIn or Facebook friends, or you may not feel able to influence them … so let’s set our aims lower. What about the other 2.14 members of your own household? (Figures may vary – our household was me + 2.75 people last time I checked – but 3.14 people per household is the official average.)

You may remember that in my recent Health and Safety post, I introduced Standard Operating Procedures to minimize interruptions to your important work. I explained how effective Signage could help you maintain concentration even in a high-traffic area. But what better way to energize your working environment and silence your family members than putting them to work too – not as writers, but as readers? While you’re busy with the Ultimate Blog Challenge, why could they not be involved with NaDoFaSaWriMo? (That’s National Donate Your Family To Save A Writer Month – in case you haven’t figured it out. Aren’t macronyms a joy?)

Think what we could achieve. If you donated your 2.14 family members and each family member befriended 30 bloggers for a month, commenting on their posts every two days, you could singlehandedly support Annie and Ed and 60 other bloggers – who’d get dozens of comments a day. Greading would be unnecessary because bloggers would stay busy writing, not pretending to read. Your working hours would be significantly shorter, and disturbances significantly fewer.

We would of course need to insist that all bloggers supported by the scheme should plant a new word each day, in order to sustain and replenish the existing stock. But I can’t see why any blogger should object to that.

So if you’re as excited about this scheme as I am, why not donate your family today, by signing up below?

And to get things started, let’s see who can come up with the best caption for Ed’s photo, to encourage others to join TwitFace’s NaDoFaSaWriMo initiative – and save our bloggers and writers. There’s a prize for the most persuasive entry: a week’s worth of comments on your blog.

No greading!

Earlier posts in the TwitFace project:

The TwitFace Plan
7 Health & Safety Tips for Bloggers

It all started with Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote:

Yes, his spelling was terrible, but what do you expect from a self-published author? Anyway, the point is that April was a time when people started making plans to go off on pilgrimage. And why? Well, if you’re familiar with The Canterbury Tales, you’ll know that the whole point of pilgrimage was meeting up with friends and strangers to swap stories. Tall stories, comic stories, bawdy stories, moral stories … everyone got into the act. There was just something in the air.

600 years later, we’re still telling stories in April – except that now, there’s none of that unpleasant walking. You can join any number of tour-groups from the comfort of your own PC, laptop, tablet or web-enabled phone. There’s the Ultimate Blog Challenge – where pilgrims pledge to write 30 posts in 30 days. Or the slightly less arduous A-Z Blogging Challenge for all 26 days of April ( – quite properly, they discount the Sabbath). Or, if like Chaucer, the Muse moves you to burst out into poetry, there’s NaPoWriMo (- I know! But these macronyms are popular in the US, they tell me).

If you haven’t started yet, and you’d like to join, it’s not too late. You can still catch up with us.

Now although we have none of the physical hardships of Chaucer’s tale-tellers, we should remember T.S Eliot’s warning – that ‘April is the cruellest month’. I was reminded of that this morning when I read the tale of plucky fellow-pilgrim, Raven Howard. Injured in Spring Training, put on the disabled list, and missing the start of the season, Raven has decided to make up for her enforced inactivity by accepting the Ultimate Blog Challenge. It’s a wise decision: in my experience, the perfect way to warm up for a prolonged period of inactivity is to commit yourself to writing a blog, backed up of course by all the normal TwitFace support activities.

But blogging can still be dangerous. Why, only last night I fell off my chair after falling asleep at the keyboard – and I hadn’t taken precautions. Like Raven, I could have had a nasty injury. So, since there are so many inexperienced bloggers joining us at the beginning of this pilgrimage season, it seemed a good time to give you …

THE TWITFACE GUIDE TO HEALTH AND SAFETY

1. A quiet, secure working area

Your job is demanding and requires the utmost concentration. Exposure to noise and frequent interruption while blogging causes stress, and may even result in a missed retweet or direct message. Ideally you should set up your workspace in an area removed from normal family life. But if you choose to work under the stairs or in a cupboard, make sure that there is adequate ventilation and lighting. If your only option is to work in a high-traffic area, then follow the directions in note 2 carefully.

2. Signage

Make sure that working areas are clearly demarcated and signed, and that instructions are clear and precise. ‘Genius at work’ is an example of a particularly bad sign, since it gives no indication of how the reader is supposed to behave. It may also cause precisely the disruption that you are trying to avoid. More effective are: ‘Keep out!’, ‘Silence!’, or ‘Go Away!’. Your signs need to be prominently displayed. If you are working in a high-traffic area, I have found it effective to pin signs to your headgear or writer’s jacket (as described below).

3. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

In my previous post, I demonstrated how to create a successful TwitFace Plan (and I’ve been delighted to hear that so many of you have found my schedule a useful template). But as well as micro-planning your own work, it’s important to define Standard Operating Procedures for other members of your household, and then to make sure that they understand and buy in to the plan. For example, there needs to be total clarity about when you may be interrupted. If the kitchen’s on fire or your spouse is having a nervous breakdown, at what point should you be notified, and what are the escalation procedures? For a deeper understanding of SOPs, please refer to the excellent post from fellow-pilgrim, Shilpa Venkateshwaran.

4. Ergonomics

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) are common in TwitFacers, due to poor chair and desk positioning. When setting up your workspace, check that your seating position, knees and elbows are all at a 90 degree angle, as shown not shown in the illustration. Beginners are then advised to check and if necessary recalibrate their positions every 15 minutes using a sextant. (For approximate angles, a spirit level may suffice – but it looks unprofessional.)

5. Clothing (The Writer’s Jacket)

Some time ago, my wife bought me the rather attractive jacket pictured – but until recently we’d never found a use for it. Now I’m a TwitFacer, it’s an important part of my writing equipment. Light, comfortable, it allows me to buckle or chain myself to the chair to prevent falls. There’s one small disadvantage: if chained in, you need a second person to release you. Earlier this week I was locked into my chair for three days before anyone noticed I was missing. That’s why I decided not to wear it last night – with disastrous consequences. A well-written SOP can help to prevent family oversights.

6. Protective Headgear

TwitFacers debate the best type of headgear for a writer. Some prefer the extra protection of a cycling helmet. I prefer a beanie, more comfortable and, in my view, sufficient to minimize damage to the skull in most writing-related accidents. I find it difficult to imagine that I could fall head-first from my chair, although encounters with the desk are not infrequent, particularly in late-night sessions.

7. Work-Life Balance

Don’t let social media take over your whole life. Remember there’s a real world out there too. Every so often, when you need a break, why not pull up the Sudoko screen, or play a couple of hands of Hearts?

Follow these guidelines and I’m sure you’ll find that blogging is an enjoyable and fulfilling experience.

Have I missed anything important? If you have any other great tips and advice, let me know, and we’ll add them to the list.