The thing with blogging is this…you’re kind of expected to knock out loads of stuff on a regular basis. While true writers may do two good pieces a month, bloggers kind of need to do something, even a little something, every day. And I think the problem here is that it hampers a lot of truly talented writers. The internet is what a lot of people are writing for now, and to keep the attention of new age readers online, you better damn well not make your story long! Because people will just skip over it. And this is an absolute tragedy.

I generally read blogs during the day, in between little breaks of work. A lot of people do this, and so due to time constraints, and just general concentration, they like to scan or skim over articles. Bloggers know this, and tend to write short, to the point pieces. With the internet we also often have so many tabs open, we’re like a kid in a candy shop when it comes to content. Do we look at the latest Megan Fox gallery, or do we read an article that seems really long? Do we Skype or Facebook or check e-mails? Our concentration is so scattered that we only want to put a few minutes into reading an article, before we’re onto something else.

In the evenings and on weekends however, our minds are relaxed and we have time to read things. And when we have a magazine in front of us, we can’t switch tabs or check e-mails, so we tend to focus on the piece at hand. Which is why I’m a fan of the old school print magazine with it’s old school articles. When we are reading a specific piece, there are no banner adverts in our face, no one trying to push anything. It is just us and the words and so we are forced to take them in. And because the writer is not pushing out articles every day, the words are powerful.

Giles Coren blew my mind with this letter he wrote to his daughter, because it is so spot on, and absolutely hilarious. A few excerpts, if I may:

“And it will be someone else, some other man, other men, who will come for you. Just now, dabbing you with wet cotton wool and fanning your arse during a bit of ‘nappy off time’, I thought of how some clumsy public school boy, 15 years from now, is going to try licking yoghurt off your snatch because he saw it in a film”

On the topic of boyfriends:

“So let him not be a footballer. Not that. Cheats and rapists all crying ‘our ball!’ even as they hoof it into touch, then driving home drunk in a Hummer to impale party girls. A cricketer I will allow. But only one who shackles himself to the cause and lays down his life in defence of the match, not one who preens and swishes and dyes his hair. If an Atherton or a Collingwood comes calling, they can see you. But a Kevin Pietersen does not come through this door”

“Please not a banker or a broker”

There is so much awesome in that article, I sat down on the couch and for the first time in ages truly enjoyed reading. It wasn’t written to stroke his ego, it wasn’t written to sell anything. It was written by a man with an astute eye for observing the world around us, and crafting that into words that fell onto that page like poetry.

Get that man a Bells!