I think I have found exactly the right feedback tool so that ‘lurkers’ (I hate the word but I like them) can partially de-lurk. Stay tuned for a digital creole storytelling feedback gizmo.

I only discovered your blog recently through healingmagichands and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Your long posts are fascinating reads for me … usually I comment. If I don’t, it is because I do not have anything to add or I need to think first. Mention Virginia Woolf however and I’ll chime right in!!

I know that I go away thinking about the issues you discuss and to me, that’s a successful post.

Funny about the length question - I had this discussion with a friend a few days’ back. Since I have just started blogging, it is a brand new world and I am constantly learning new things. Most of my posts are not long and receive some commentary. But then I began to wonder if any people had read the two long book reviews that I wrote. One of them has not received any comments and I was struck by that.

After talking about this, I figured I would just keep on writing as I have been … whatever the length. Why cut one’s thoughts short just to retain readers? Self-expression seems like a more worthy goal to me.

Enjoy the kittens and keep on writing!

If I hadn’t discovered the world of blog, I would never have come across you, or Charlotte, or Bloglily, or any of the other wonderful people I have had the great good fortune of reading.

Incidentally, one of my favorite posts here was the one on fidelity, and I don’t think I ever commented on it, although I have read it twice.

Lorelle: it was never my intention to remove the long posts (god forbid). I only mentioned it as a provocation so I could get a lot of great compliments In a sense, these have filled my feedback pride to keep me going without comments for a year at least.

This is excellent feedback.

Please, please, please don’t give up your long posts just to get comments. I love them. They make me think, and I often read them to my husband (or print them out and add them to the pile of “round tuit” stuff).

I don’t want to be one of the few “lengthy post bloggers” out here all alone.

Sometimes I’ll save your blog up and then go and have a long read. I like doing that. Other times, I just wander over and see what’s up. (Kittens??!! Cuuuuuute.)

I think the answer to your question about whether you should keep writing long posts might lie in what exactly defines — for you — a writing product of high quality. I don’t know if the number or quality of comments is a good measure of that. (In other words lots of great comments = a great post.) Could be that it’s simply deeply satisfying to get your ideas down, and that’s enough. Could be that the point of the long posts is to engage readers in a discussion. If you’re not getting enough engagement, and that’s what you’d want, I’d tinker with what you’re doing a little — maybe establish a schedule, or make a short announcement ahead of time. It’s Mandarine Friday, and that means a good meaty post on the topic of ______.

For what it’s worth, though, I think of your blog as very successful — it reaches me and I love reading it.

xo, BL

Emily: they take way too much disk space (probably several terabytes each) to travel by e-mail, so I’d have to send them by fedex or dhl. Maybe I could dehydrate them to save on the parcel weight, and all you’d have to do is soak them in water for a couple of hours. But I am not sure they like water all that much, and I’d rather spare them the awful experience of jetlag — I am afraid the answer is no.