Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock
Sunday, May 1, 2005. Can there be a 60-second blogger or columnist or essayist, in the manner of Dan Hurley’s “60-Second Novelist”?
Yes. Why else pose the question?
I just reviewed Hurley’s Web site, including listening to a seven-minute NPR interview — serious for public radio (not as big as nine or 18, but Hurley to some might have warranted just three). The stories are not just a minute.
They’re not novels and not really short-short stories, either, I see on this last visit (I own his book, too). The works are often more like ghosted personal anecdote and in the third person so non-fiction, although occasionally Hurley moves the truth to a small fantasy or just a pun.
These are not far from journalism, may even qualify in some generations are journalism — Hurley’s training is obvious there — and in fact are close to some kinds of columns.
There’s a few minutes of interview, which in the NPR interview Hurley said usually is about 10, but on the FAQs page of his site sound like less than 5. The typing takes 1-2 minutes so there’s no stopwatch? He writes that it’s more like 12-15 an hour, because the site’s purpose after all is to secure bookings. (Math: he therefore takes 3-5 minutes.) His is an act.
Aha! Columns take minutes at a time, and therefore thieves are columnists because they steal company time. Full-time job, indeed.
Let’s recall Steinbeck:
“I write many thousands of words a day and some of them go on paper. And of those written down, only a few are meant to be seen.”
Which means a writer writes even when he’s away from his desk.
My application of the “60-Second Novelist” would be similar. The point is to get myself to upload something nearly every day. The Brick then becomes a billboard of myself? Selling what? There’s little to be gained by elaborating. Figure it out: You might be right.
Applying Hurley’s original idea is that I sit at one of my keyboards with the morning’s newspaper as well as any index cards on which I have jotted “hmmm notes.” Those are what KC Star columnist Bill Tammeus calls his random ideas that may work into columns — as in, “what about the …” that he jots down all the time. On reviewing those, if he goes “hmmm,” they just may work into 700 words.
“Hmmm notes” is a very useful idea.
So, I take a very short time, three minutes say, to consider, then write for two minutes so it’s five minutes total. That then would be 120-150 words as I am a fast typist. Clean it up, maybe elaborate a bit, and I’m done in far, far fewer than 30 minutes.
A newspaper column requires a lot more time because it is written to length and deadline, both pretty unforgiving. The hours go into working out those organizational challenges, as well as making the writing so pristine that editors have a hard time mucking it up.
What may be going on is since the creation of Brick is that I have not acted 24-7 like a writer-columnist-blogger-Brick layer.
This may be comparable, for me at least, to my work as a reviewer of concerts, plays and books, the last of which I still do.
When I have tried to explain the craft and sadness of reviewing to others, I ask if they take a lot of photos. It’s a good comparison but only if you know the basis. Lots of people do know this one enough to understand. Those that don’t get a little angry and certainly disbelieving.
When you shoot an event, OK just a family picnic, you concentrate on finding the right photos, to the exclusion of participating fully or innocently enjoying the event. It’s very good for some people, especially shy people, to be the chronicler, because it gives them something to do, instead of nervously wondering if they’re doing and saying the right things and making themselves miserable. Still, the photog loses the experience as a participant.
Similarly, watching a show to review it, you have to take at least a few notes. Instead of savoring the music or losing oneself in the plot (concert or play), the reviewer constantly judges: what’s the plot, how well is the director pacing the plot, which character is which, how authentic is the acting, was that a dramatic pause or a skipped line? In a symphony concert, my constant self-question is what the heck do I write about? The allegro was too fast, the moderato too moderate? Last, how much time do I have to write how long?
Pretty much the same with book reviews. There’s reading critically then there’s reading critically!
To extend this to writing the Brick: To do it right, therefore, I continually have to hunt for “hmmms” and write them down. I don’t do that now. I prefer to live life. But this life that’s so much work and worry, is that really living?
The new angle on being a 60-second writer that I can add on today’s deliberation is that it takes the reader/viewer just a minute to read. I mean, one common definition of an ideal newspaper column is that it can be read while one sits in the bathroom. That’s, what, no more than four minutes if one’s digestive track is reasonably functional? -30-
