If you read English and have an internet connection, sooner or later you’re going to run across the strange acronymn TL;DR which stands for “Too long, didn’t read”.
If you look over on the sidebar under the heading “Blogposts about this Blog” and actually click on all the links, you’ll find several which say (approximately) “Hey this article I’m linking to is long but worth reading anyway”.
I am now currently in the process of writing a book in Romanian, a collection of stories and anecdotes and everyone’s advice has been the same – keep it short.
I also (occasionally) read Romanian blogs, some of which are linked on my sidebar and some others not, and they universally seem to have posts of about 3-4 paragraphs at most.
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, on the bus ride from Bucharest to Cluj, the only newspapers I saw people reading were the “gossip” or tabloid papers, filled with photos and short articles with punchy titles like “Celebrity X did Y!”.
I’m not disrespecting Romania – on the same bus ride, I also saw two people reading full-length books – but there does seem to be a trend towards shorter pieces. Maintaining the reader’s attention past that point is too difficult.
I have to wonder where this trend is coming from and why. I thought about this quite a lot as I am a person who writes for a living (wow!) and the last thing I ever want to do is alienate a reader simply because what I write is too long.
I also have to keep in mind that I myself am an avid reader, including of very long books, as I come from a family where reading is an ordinary, daily activity. Clearly we’re all “out of the ordinary” in terms of how much we read compared to the general public.
Secondly, I also have no editor. Or I am my own editor, which means I am less reluctant to cut my own words than (theoretically) a more objective person would be. I don’t know if you can see the statistics on these web posts but almost every single one has been edited 3-5 times and sometimes more. Yet it still may not be enough.
And then I remembered an interesting discussion I had with someone at the bar last week, in which a guy told me he had to throw out his television because if it was in his house, he’d watch it until his eyes were burning. I believe his exact words were something akin to, “Some people can’t have beer in their house and I’m just like that, only with TV.”
I understood that sentiment exactly because I too am like that. I have not owned a television in years and one of the principle reasons I enjoy my life in Romania so much is that I can go to grocery stores, restaurants, bars and cafes and not see a television.
Even better, I can go visit friends in their homes and it’s still completely normal to sit around and talk and not have the television turned on.
When I grew up, television was everywhere and the debate was always what kind of programming is “best” for people – how much “educational” programming should there be, what hour at night is it okay to start showing “adult” shows, what cuss words are forbidden and how much violence (a lot) or sex (almost none) is allowed.
The debate was never is this thing killing our brains?
When I was a young adult, living on my own for the first time and going out in the world and meeting people, I did a survey of my closest friends and discovered we all had one thing in common – as children, we watched little to no television.
One good friend of mine grew up in a very rural area of America where television reception was poor (via an antenna) and cable/satellite only came much later.
Another friend of mine grew up as a child of a government official who implemented projects in “Third World” countries. Therefore any TV programming was in a variety of foreign languages and/or non-existent.
Whatever the reason, all of the people I liked the best grew up without spending a lot of time watching television.
Does that matter? Was it just a coincidence or a fluke? Or does watching a lot of television impact your ability to do other things, such as communicate and read/write?
I think it does. In fact, I know it does. Some of the happiest hours I’ve ever spent in this country were just sitting around, talking to people (and eating good food, of course). And this is a nation where most of those people grew up with little to no television.
When I finally got the strength (back in America) to remove my television, and then friends would come over, a very odd thing would always occur. People would sit around, looking this way and that, unsure what to do or what to say. And then after that moment of awkwardness, the conversations would begin and the next thing we knew, hours had flown by.
And yet even back in the days when I greatly enjoyed watching television shows with my friends, I noticed that there was barely any conversation going on. Sure we might groan or gasp together at something or laugh at a funny joke or line, but the conversation was “stunted”.
I learned this one day when my friends and I bought a video camera and began filming just about everything while playing around with it. I filmed my friend watching a TV show (unbeknownst to him) and had nearly five minutes of uninterrupted footage of his slack, unmoving face. He looked exactly like what he was – a man in a trance.
Next time someone you know is watching TV, walk in the room and look at their face. You’ll see exactly what I mean.
Every single time you speak to an actual human being, you get better at talking. That’s an absurdly simple truth and yet it’s an important one. It’s a strange thing to be grateful for in Romania (where it’s common) and yet in USA I have had tens of thousands of hours of conversations more than most Americans my age.
If you and I were both of equal “natural” skill when playing golf and I went out to the links and played 10,000 holes of golf while you sat at home, watching TV shows about golf, which of us is going to be the better player?
The same is true with reading (and writing). The more you do it, the better you’re going to get at it. In 2011, we are all surrounded by a virtually infinite amount of information, the vast majority of which is written down. Being able to read and understand all of that is the key to the kingdom, folks.
Is it hard? Yeah sometimes it is. Believe me, I’ve plowed my way through Kierkegaard (in English though, thank goodness). I’ve written government manuals. I understand that it’s hard. But sometimes it’s worth it.
Watching TV on the other hand nets you nothing more than a long litany of anecdotes about parts of episodes that you can remember.
All Things Romania 
I too have been living without television for many years so I completely understand what you are saying. Part of the reason was chance, as I kept moving around living in different places(Romania,America, Britain), and part of it was that there is rarely anything worth watching on television. If I really want to watch something most of that is going to be on youtube or a film in a cinema. Other than that, I do a lot of listening(conversations, radio, music) and less watching. Cheers!
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Here’s one little story. It doesn’t contradict or agree with anything, it’s just something that I feel goes along the line.
Before the Revolution I was so keen on reading books that my pragmatic father was worried. He’s a man of action, living in the present, quite sharp otherwise, flexible and adaptable, the kind of guy you would ask for practical advices when you needed some, not that much interested in the “what’s all of this about when you really get down to it?” of things, but rather in “what can you do with things”, and that prevented him from getting into strong ideologies or bigotry that are still haunting others.
While I appreciate a lot this side of him and I really like to think I inherited at least a small part, I remember his constant advices to me (all the way up to the point in time where I started to give advices to him) and those were: “please also read newspapers, watch news on TV, stay informed all the time, don’t dig yourself a hole” (as I was pretty much inclined to do that).
I still think he was and is so right about it. Even with all the bullshit floating around, he’s still right.
And now to link this somehow to the article, I think a TV in the house is necessary, newspapers are too (on paper or on-line). It’s not all brainwashing or a waste of time. I kept reading long books, too, it’s not about attention span, it’s about interest, taste.
Your blog is enough of a short demo/trial version for your books (and I don’t find your posts falling under their own weight/length), so I don’t think you should cut your books “short”.
But if you truly started to write a book in Romanian, feel free to post one or two articles in Romanian too (that is if/when you feel like it and think you have the morale to face the local “police” :D ).
Cheers!
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nah, I’ll never post (entirely) in Romanian even if I spoke/wrote it perfectly. There are wonderful Romanian writers on my blogroll and I support the Romanian language 100%. It’s just THIS website is always different and that means (mostly) in English.
My new book coming out next month will, however, be entirely in Romanian :D
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I don’t see the link between reading books/short stories and watching TV, you can do both. But then again I read your post diagonally as well because I am at work so I will just comment on what interests me(and I do have the attention span of a gold fish) Btw, speaking of goldfish, once around the aquarium and he resets (that sounds better in French). Regarding the gossip mags, I think ppl just want to disconnect from whatever daily problems they have (low pensions, government, high taxes and prices and so on) and just read about other ppl’s problems, glamorous ppl who are rich, and maybe live a different kind a life, maybe even fantasize about dating rich ppl, and so on.
On the other hand, Romanians do tend to lose patience quickly and are not very consistent (just look at Romania’s political situation in the last 20 yrs) So sometimes another acronym can be a good idea, KISS (Keep it short and simple), not because we are simple minded ppl, just because this is how we are made.
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I just realized i always type in English my answers. Ha ha, it’s as if I don’t’ use it enough at work.
Reasons I read books or smtg else than gossip:
– gossip mags show the part i dislike or don’t associate with
– i dislike the promotion of certain behaviours and i don’t want to pay for that so it’s like.. not giving them money for it
– i really don’t care what Mutu does with his nose or how much plastic some of those girls wear
– books open horizons of thought
– learning something
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And BTW – I have a TV at home thats on a lot of time – on VH1 Classics and Mezzo – old rock and classical music never hurt anyone.
When someone comes tho I put it on silent tho.
PS: desi am descoperit ca Richard Wagner ascultat la maximum sistemului de sunet are un efect minunat asupra tiganilor care asculta manele date tare in apartamentul de alaturi. Parca ii umple de energie – se agita, urla, injura, zbiara, am inteles ca bat si la usa desi nu i-am auzit niciodata pe deasupra muzicii. Cand ei dau manele tare eu nu le bat la usa. A incercat un vecin si a mancat bataie.
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http://www.orasulciteste.ro/2010/noul-logo-lecturi-urbane.html
Sam nu e chiar asa cum pare ! Eu sunt unul din aia care citesc carti in transportul in comun.
Iar la intrebarea de citesc in metrou – raspunsul meu este ca peisajul care se vede pe geam nu ma mai fascineaza de mult.
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lots of people are reading books in Bucharest, if you were to use the subway in the morning you might find more books than gossip magazines. you can also make a distinction between the profiles of the people according to what they read. the corporate working drones read books, the ones that read gossip are differen (i like to call them drones not because they are like the bee drones, but like small robots that do not operate on their own and they are like on automatic pilot). drones also read gossip, but somewhat less i guess, after all i know quite a few
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Well, I was with you right up until the last sentence when the post not-so-subtly became one of *those* anti-tv rants. I’m surprised I didn’t see it coming.
But to back up briefly to your discussion of short reading attention spans, ok let’s say the two sides of this coin are 1) society (with tv) conditioning people to be impatient when obtaining content, and 2) the writing failing to engage the reader. (And I definitely feel like my own attention span has decreased in the last decade or so.) My metric for “good writing” is first engage the reader by framing the content as a story; a story is much easier to follow than a bunch of facts or stand-alone ideas. (I think that’s why your book works so well, because it’s really just a bunch of stories about people.) Failing that, the next best thing is to get to the point. And if a writer can’t do those two things, then I think blaming people for short attention spans is missing the bigger picture.
I’ve recently taken to analyzing tv shows the way one might analyze a novel in school (which almost never failed to ruin my enjoyment of the book). TV shows that used to have solid writing behind them now have plot holes and characters that act unrealistically, whereas some of the once much-maligned “reality tv” shows are inspirational and have better “plots” than the fiction shows. Also, the even-more-maligned soap operas have some redeeming use in my mind (aside from you do need a long attention span since they do NOT “get to the point” quickly) and that is that for an astute observer they teach you about social interactions…or…something. (May not apply to the overly dramatic Spanish-language soaps on Romanian tv.)
Great…I think my whole comment turned into tl;dr. A+ for me.
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A+ :)
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I used to watch television crap but now I only watch Discovery. Everything else is just politics and bad circus (sorry for the pleonasm).
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Hm, funny thing, most of my best friends didn’t had television sets either.
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