On Reading, Writing, Attention Span, and Bull Riding — or How to Build a Shitty Analogy, and Write About it With Confidence

Reading might feel like bull riding these days: eight seconds (at most), and most of us are off. The time it takes to read roughly forty words, a paragraph like this one — that’s our average attention span. It might be less, but hardly any more than that.

A writing might be a Bodacious bull or a meek one (strength under control). Undeniably, though, we have more bulls to ride (writings to read, stimuli competing for our attention). “Er…” Go ahead, say it. “Now that’s some ‘bull shit’ you are talking about.”

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How do you plan your writing so the  reading is of a comfortable pace (not too fast, not too slow) and are not an overwhelming force (too much information thrown together, too dense language) for the reader? Attention is valuable and scarce in the digital age.

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So, enough with this writing. I don’t want to overstay my welcome — not for this particular writing. I might have gone to extremes just to make a point (I might fail, but I put enough thought into my writing). See you next, net cowboy.

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I wrote it and went running.