Reader Boko999 says:
I enjoy the content of your posts but find the way they are broken up extremely annoying and I think breaking them up this way diminishes their impact. I’m not sure if it’s a deal breaker for me yet.
Time always tells 🙂
I was afraid that would happen with some readers. But I was also convinced, going into this, that even more would be turned off by the sometimes-extreme length (at least by blogging standards) of some of the stuff I write.
I am trying to keep readers engaged by breaking things in interesting places, sometimes building in little cliff-hangers, and interleaving the multipart posts with shorter standalone pieces for variety.
There’s a practical human aspect for me in all this, in that writing these things often takes a considerable amount of time. Stuck as I am with the tribulations of partial employment, part of which is scrambling with freelance jobs (and recently, moving), I’m up some nights until 2 or 3 a.m., trying to complete pieces to post here. If I post these longer pieces only after they’re completed, it might be two or three days each time before I have new pieces to post.
I’ve toyed with the idea of stitching multi-part posts together, posting them as additional single narratives after the individual parts are all posted, but I’ve worried that that would be even more annoying and confusing. Suggestions?
The payoff for me in doing this is two things.
One is the opportunity to present what I hope are some new ideas in atheism. I like to think that my quirky metaphorical approach to the subject can give people new ways to think about it, and I really want to increase both the number of atheists and their comfort in thinking about the field’s diverse arguments.
The second payoff is interesting comments. Since most readers don’t comment, I welcome everything, even complaints, from the people who do.
Boko999, I really hope you’ll stay.
But I’d also love to hear from the rest of you. Any thoughts about the multi-part posts, or other aspects of my writing?
(Just FYI, those leaving compliments are welcome to gush shamelessly. There is no limit on the amount of praise I’m prepared to handle.)