The ideal length of a song is 3 minutes. The ideal length of a movie is 2 hours. The ideal length of a book is 300 pages. Of course, these "ideals" are really more like averages, and much leeway is allowed. There is nothing wrong at all with the lengths of "Der Abschied," Lawrence of Arabia , or Clarissa . But under the "life is too short" principle, we are usually inclined to favor movies and books of modest duration. We need more persuasion or confidence to begin tackling a work that's much longer than these ideals. Whenever Deirdre and I are browsing the New Nonfiction section of a bookstore, we're always reading off intriguing titles or jacket copy to each other, but also checking the page count. A book that seems interesting at 300 pages needs to be a lot more compelling at 500 pages. For that reason, I have sometimes tried to write 300-page books. I would very much like to write a 300-page book. But I have always failed. All the time I was working on Code: The Hidden Language of Computer
Read More...