Where I’ve Been
Of course I know you have been wondering. Of course you have. First, I’ve been ghostwriting a book. Sorry, can’t say any more about it. That endeavor has kept me at the computer for long hours, so about the last thing that I have wanted to do afterwards is sit here and write some more. I’m working on how to make it so that blog posts will flow more often. Haven’t cracked the code on that puzzle yet.
Second, a bunch of my discretionary time has been spent in the company of a new Nikon D80 digital camera. Early results are in at my betterphoto.com gallery. Have a look!
Defensiveness
The next time that I am feeling defensive, I will pause to ask, “What exactly is it that I am defending?”
I feel certain that what I defend usually resides not on surface circumstances, nor in the content of any discussion, but someplace within. We defend what we wish to keep, and much of what I wish to keep through defensiveness is not worth holding on to.
Books About Leadership
A search for books about “leadership” at Amazon produced 224,735 results (one of them mine). Yet doesn’t it seem as though nothing much ever changes in the practice of leadership?
Problems And Gratitude
One disadvantage of an analytical problem-solving mind (like mine), is that it loves problems and may seek them out beyond the bounds of what is good for me. Problems are food for such a mind. I can keep that tendency at bay, and also feed my mind, with frequent doses of gratitude.
Can a 6th Grader Read Your Blog?
I never submit a book or article for publication without checking its “readability.” That means applying the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Test, which shows how easy or difficult it is to read a piece. The test yields a grade level score. For example, a score of 7.9 means that the piece is readable for the average student in the seventh grade. I imagine who my readers will be and try to make the piece readable for them; not so difficult that they will tune it out, not so easy that they will feel that I am talking down to them.
I don’t want my work to read like either an overblown scientific tome–the promise of entirely dependable, reliable and accurate measures for the readability of written material remains wholly in the ethereal realms of human possibility–or like Dr. Seuss–reading is hard!
My natural style is about 11.0, which is about the same as the writing in the New York Times.
I recently ran across two testers that claim to measure the readability of a blog. The first, Mike’s Readability Tester, yielded a grade level score of around 11.5 for my two blogs. The second, the Juicy Studio Readability Test, yielded scores around 5.5. Big difference!
I don’t know how to account for the difference, but I trust Mike’s test because it yields results that are consistent with what I know to expect.
P.S. This post tested at 9.9 in the Flesch-Kincaid test provided by MS Word.