Reflecting on my writings, five sizes are apparent, each more expansive than the other. The trick might seem for me to match the size to the idea, but not really, since a person can express any idea at any level. I believe in fractal ideas.
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels are very short, the Twitters of this blog, and always connect to a post previously written. Morsels consist of four-to-six short comments or additions to earlier posts. I have posted 135 Morsels during the 54 months of this blog.
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Posts are 100 to 250 words in two or three short paragraphs. My goal for a post is to make a single point clearly, although the point can be as trivial as earbuds in corporate lawyers or as profound as epistemological uncertainty about all knowledge of law department management. LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com from its Hildebrandt origins more than five years ago through yesterday had 5,558 posts. Even metaposts, which compile six or more posts on a topic, are not all that long. At this moment readers can research 472 metaposts that compile 6,267 posts and refer to 213 metaposts. There are no less than 20 hyperposts, which each collect five or more metaposts on a topic.
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My online column, “Morrison on Metrics,” appears every two weeks on the InsideCounsel webpage. Columns weigh in at 500 words or so and they let me flesh out a point more than my self-limited, shorter posts allow. I can uncramp and give examples and offer some consequences of the particular metric treated in the column.
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The bi-monthly articles for the National Law Journal I write, which for it and a predecessor number more than 62 over the past five years, run approximately 1,500 words and let me expand even more than do columns.
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My books and blooks wax even more expansively. I have published three traditional books and three blog books (blooks). Someday I may tackle a compendium on management of legal departments, but I doubt it. The effort is too great, the regurgitation too unappealing, and the pressure to fill in holes with generalities turns me off.
My challenge as a writer and management consultant to general counsel is to put good material out there in the right length and link the ideas to each other.