How Much Time Do You Have?

Writing a 250-page book might feel intimidating if you’ve never written anything.

Imagine you’re a runner who covers a couple of miles two or three times a week. Imagine also that you’ve never entered a running race but always wanted to. Would you sign up for a marathon?

My guess is that you wouldn’t.

You’d probably look for a 5-mile around-the-town race — something challenging but more within reach.

Right?

A short race is to the aspiring marathon runner what a tiny book (10–15K words) is to the aspiring novelist or long-form memoirist.

But there’s a twist: writing short form might be harder than writing long form.

Being concise requires careful thinking, precision, and the ability to detect and cut details that are only half-relevant to your message.

As Blaise Pascal famously said, “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

My question to you then is: how much time do you have?

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