Melbourne stand-up comic and Age columnist Catherine Deveny was sacked from her newspaper for inappropriate Tweeting during the Logies ceremony. I remember when email first arrived and everyone was shooting off emails impulsively and then feeling chagrined at the things said. Now we’ve developed an appropriate language for emails and make sure we check them for “tone” before sending. I wonder if Tweeting doesn’t have this yet, or whether it’s built into the form not have it. And is it also part of the reduction of wordage to fit into modern (fast) life? Is that why short story contests now specify a word length of 1,500 words, or even shorter, the so-called short, short stories of 700-800 words. The ABC’s Radio National has asked for “celebratory, thoughtful, descriptive, creative works that engage with the human/avian relationship” for its Birdland project. The word length – 300. Don’t we already have a creative short form that often runs to that length, and isn’t it poetry?
Thoughts on books and writing