Not that you are counting my words, but when I set out write here on this blog project every weekday I told myself I had only one rule: keep it short and sweet.
I was going to try not to stray beyond 200 words in any given post.
If I couldn’t get the idea out in two hundred, maybe it wasn’t honed enough. Maybe I was babbling. Maybe it should have been something bigger than a blurb herein.
But the problem? Every post last week was well over two hundred, the last one creeping up to nearly 300 words.
Is that a bad thing?
Guardrails, even self-imposed ones can be important for the simple reason that creative restrictions often create a better product. In this particular case, volume was not my challenge. I know I can sit down any day and type-type-type out an essay-length post if I am so inclined. My challenge to myself and for the focus of this project was rather honing ideas to a sharp point, not muddling around in a big vat of chocolate-pudding-flavoured ideas.
What are your guardrails? Do you step over them? And does it ultimately, honestly, make the result better? Or not.
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