The Tao Te Ching features 81 verses and, in writing my series on the TTC, I provided one post per verse. Some of those posts zeroed in on only one aspect of the verse, while many others covered several points. Also, because there is a plethora of material, commentaries and analyses on this ancient text, the majority of the posts contained not only my thoughts but the thoughts of many others.
The current series on the Wen Tzu is being handled far differently. For one thing, I am near completion of the first 1/4 of the verses (45 out of 180) and yet there have already been 81 posts! At the rate I'm going, the entire series will contain between 300 - 350 entries. Gosh, that will be book length. ;-)
There are two reasons I've decided to break up most of the verses across several posts. For starters, many of the verses are far longer than those featured in the TTC. In fact, there are a few verses that span several pages. So, just transcribing the text on the blog would necessitate a lot of typing on my part and a lot of reading on your part PLUS whatever commentary I might offer.
The second reason is that I believe shorter posts are easier to digest than long tomes. I don't know about you, but I visit some blogs that feature posts that scroll down the length of the screen and then they go some more! Since I follow a lot of blogs, I often don't have the time nor energy to read "War & Peace" on every blog.
I also realize that I have a tendency to be a bit long-winded myself. So, I'm making a conscious effort to draw your attention to a succinct point or two and then to leave it at that.
In addition, with so many posts to write and a limited number of themes to present, it makes sense to keep things short. If I had decided to write long tomes, I would soon run out of metaphors and examples. Repeating the same things over and over again would become boring for you and me as well.
So, do you folks like the shorter posts (which doesn't include this one, of course)?
The current series on the Wen Tzu is being handled far differently. For one thing, I am near completion of the first 1/4 of the verses (45 out of 180) and yet there have already been 81 posts! At the rate I'm going, the entire series will contain between 300 - 350 entries. Gosh, that will be book length. ;-)
There are two reasons I've decided to break up most of the verses across several posts. For starters, many of the verses are far longer than those featured in the TTC. In fact, there are a few verses that span several pages. So, just transcribing the text on the blog would necessitate a lot of typing on my part and a lot of reading on your part PLUS whatever commentary I might offer.
The second reason is that I believe shorter posts are easier to digest than long tomes. I don't know about you, but I visit some blogs that feature posts that scroll down the length of the screen and then they go some more! Since I follow a lot of blogs, I often don't have the time nor energy to read "War & Peace" on every blog.
I also realize that I have a tendency to be a bit long-winded myself. So, I'm making a conscious effort to draw your attention to a succinct point or two and then to leave it at that.
In addition, with so many posts to write and a limited number of themes to present, it makes sense to keep things short. If I had decided to write long tomes, I would soon run out of metaphors and examples. Repeating the same things over and over again would become boring for you and me as well.
So, do you folks like the shorter posts (which doesn't include this one, of course)?
I tend to like popping in and being able to read the post in a matter of a min or two. I live a rather full life as well and while I enjoy your musings, I will tend to skip a post altogether if I sense it is too long. It's no offense, just a statement of fact. Also the short "nuggets of Truth" tend to stick with me longer giving me a chance to apply it more readily to my life.
ReplyDeleteI'm the same way. If a post simply looks too long, I usually skip it.
ReplyDeleteWhat? I'm sorry, I lost track halfway through that....
ReplyDeleteFacebook has totally destroyed my attention span lately. Good thing I don't do twitter!
OMG! U funny. :D
ReplyDelete