OPEN LETTERS
Open Letter to Medium Writers for my Speed Writing Courses
My Mercedes-Benz W125 mind reads at 432.59 kilometers per hour. I’m sorry.
Dearest Medium Reader and Dedicated Followers,
I think I need to explain. And maybe even apologize. I’m sorry. Really. I’m not writing this for “hits.”
Years ago, Rutgers University offered “speed reading classes.” When the brochure arrived, along with The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone, I thought: well, I got so much bathroom reading to do. I considered the Rutgers course in the innocuous white envelope and red lettering as mere junk mail.
And when The New Yorker joins me in the bathroom, my daughter Nancy, an avid New Yorker reader, refuses to read due to possible “residual fecal matter” and “accidental urine spray” and a “funny” odor from the pages not related whatsoever to the New Yorker cartoons or “Shouts and Murmurs.”
I have dreamt of kidnapping a “Shouts and Murmurs” writer. I would then send one of my own “much wittier” pieces under their byline, and the Literary Powers That Be would finally publish me because I’m that damn funny.
Would the jail time be worth it? Yes, dear reader. And no harm will come to Paul Rudnick — I promise, except for his wounded pride.
Anyway.
With hundreds of essays to read and critique per week from my English scholars (my classroom is a Dickensian workhouse of scribes), as well as keeping up with my “one novel a week” routine for Goodreads, which includes War and Peace, Bleak House, and Infinite Jest — (we’re not talking a stroll around the block with Old Man and the Sea, folks) — and then adding the amount of material I read on Medium to stay “in tune” and “attached” to followers and up-in-coming super writers (such as the “10 Reasons Why Picking your Nose can Lead to Premature Death and Social Mortification”), I knew something had to be done.
(btw, I liked how that author used “mort” — death — as in mortification in their essay on nose picking. Genius!)
Malcolm Gladwell’s suggestion — or assertion — of “thin-slicing,” which I had been doing after reading his book Blink — see also (Ultramicrotomy) — helped me quickly scan and assess, correctly, 2,000-word student dissertations on Huckleberry Finn in one minute.
The rubric actually took longer than the reading.
This way, I was able to increase the number of written assessments to two per week for each student. Yes, hands may have cramped, fingernails splintered, and the letters on the keyboard may have faded, but I was creating writer superstars! Such portfolios, mind you, have helped them get into what they consider “prestigious” colleges where they can work remotely from the kitchen table at home with dad making dinner.
Sorry. I forgot my audience.
Medium writers have been (or may be “sus” — you know, suspicious) or upset or even “furious at me being such a wanker or tosser” with the amount of time I have spent “reading” their articles. Because the amount of time on an article means precious pennies in your piggy bank. I get it. I feel the same weight. Each country has its own creative epithet for “bonehead” — like “coot,” “el tonto,” or “berk” or “imbécile” or “goon” or “galah” — down there in Australia. Or in Gaelic — leathcheann! Or arse or tit (Anglicized).
Isn’t language amazing? It’s one of the reasons I love Medium, right? It’s worldwide.
Anyway. Methinks I digress too much.
As Ben Franklin said, “A penny saved is a penny squandered.” Wait. Was that it?
But nothing helped me more than Speed Reading! We’re talking 3,000 words per minute! What’s the average?
Well, 220–350 WPM (words per minute). Thanks, Uncle Google — or Scholar Within.
So, Medium Reader, it’s not that I scanned or “thin-sliced” your essay or story. Who does that? My brain has simply been trained and rewired to increase its processing speed like the newest Apple product from China.
Superfast. Lightning speed — accuracy and speed! Like a great footballer for Real Madrid! Or my team — Newcastle United!
Even with such speed, I can understand nuance, pathos, humor, and your two-minute analysis of the History of The Middle East Conflict. And I can “fairy edit” — if time allows — a misspelled word or a misplaced modifier — (I hope you don’t mind). The professor in me has trouble turning my internal grammar check off.
Likewise, the speed writing course also helped me “rev” up my two-finger typing skills to type 300 words per minute, even though I still confuse “A” with “E” and “O” with “U” but are vowels even needed anymore?
Can’t we understand a sentence with just consonants? Fnc? What’s that wrd? Fence and word! See! sy! Or Easy!
So for that one Twitter person who chastised me for missing “Nathaniel” once with an “A” — yes, you are correct. It was an error. ‘To err is human.” And John Keats and Herman Melville were notorious poor spellers, not that I would place myself into the pantheon of those scribblers, yet — but I just blame my Mercedes-Benz W125 mind.
And Overfocused ADD — that’s legit — or frfr — or fo rizzle! And I am medicated and in therapy. So please — dear Medium — have sympathy for the overactive, supercharged creative mind, set loose on the Autobahn.
Am I to blame for giving you only .01 pence or penny for your 15-minute read on the peculiarly human sexual habits of penguins? Didn’t you like my comment: “Well done”? Or “Gives me some ideas for the bedroom? LOL.”
Who’s setting that read-time anyway? Is there a Medium “medium” who knows these things? Does such a shaman live on Long Island? Is the game fixed like a roulette wheel in Tombstone with Doc Holliday or the 1919 World Series and with Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein?
These are mere suppositions, my friends, and not accusations. Readers, like plants, grow at different rates. So do my Vanguard Mutual Funds. Why didn’t I transfer more to that one that’s getting 30.7%?
What a galah!
Dear Medium reader, I know it’s awesome now to finally make “bank” on our creative labor. Magazines are no longer using me as a “slave” for free labor — or like a pimp who “screws me” for my mind — and then takes all reward. Don’t we wake up and feel used? Soiled? Shamed?
I know. I’ve been there, friend. Getting a Medium tax form means progress, yet — perhaps even progress to that book deal with Penguin (the one in New York and not those sex-obsessed penguins in Antarctica. What else is there to do down there for warmth and excitement, eh?)
And when that book comes out, I’ll buy it — as long as it’s good, right? If it takes me five minutes to read or an hour, you still get the same percentage, right? Well, it depends on the publisher and your agent.
Listen. I feel bad now. For The New Yorker and Bleak House from Dickens and my student essays on Frederick Douglass and slavery, I’ll keep my Mercedes-Benz W125.
But on Medium, I swear by this Bust of the Bard (Shakespeare), I’ll find a Yugo somewhere and take it slow on the John Denver Country Roads with a ton of trackers or road construction.
If I can’t find a Yugo, how about a Chevy Nova? That means “No Go” in Spanish. Yeah — stupid marketers who don’t even know basic Spanish. or maybe a Nissan Sentra or something.
If I spend ten minutes behind an Amish wagon in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and the route on Google Maps was only supposed to take one minute, well, I guess that’s dimes in your piggy bank. And not a percentage of a Lincoln penny — or whatever monetary system your country may use.
Hate to be another one of those “America-Centric” writers. Sorry.
And if you would be so kind as not to take my advice about “speed reading” to my “thirty-minute” manifestos and “short” stories, I would be so forever grateful and gladly follow you to Oz — or New York — or London.
For a book deal.
Your read, after all, just may just help purchase a fine craft brew at Tonewood. And we’re talking a DDH IPA, man.
Happy writing, yours, forever apologetically and condescendingly,
Walter T. Bowne
PS: Now let me speed-read Don Juan from Byron (pronounced Jew-en — I swear by the Bard). It should take fifteen minutes. Hope Byron in heaven (or that Other Place) doesn’t mind.
PPS: Complaints can be submitted as “comments” to this article or to my “time spent per article.” No need to attack me on Twitter or FB or Instagram or email — unless you want to, man. It’s freedom of speech!
Peace, writers, and readers, brothers, and sisters, all.