I once made the mistake of clicking on a button labelled: Tweet this. The “this” in question was the number of words I’d written in that session. The software was Scrivener, the Mac version. As I was feeling rather pleased with myself for clocking up around 2,400 words in little more than an hour, and as I can never resist pressing buttons (good job I’m not in charge of launching nuclear missiles), I clicked.
A tweet went out stating that I’d written 2,400 words (or whatever it was) and immediately — IMMEDIATELY — someone I’d thought was a friend replied, “And?”.
He tried to make it sound like a joke, but it hadn’t come across as a joke. That was the first and last time I clicked on that button or, indeed, shared similar statistics. Except to mention, a week or so ago, that on my Substack newsletter (see below) I’ve published over 630 articles.
By and large, though, I have come to the conclusion that most of this kind of data is pointless, and sharing it is even more pointless. Still, this is what I published a few years ago. Knock yourself out.
Exif data, by Terry Freedman. This is the metadata of a photograph.
The most recent article I wrote for a client is characterised by 24 pieces of data:
Started: 05 June 2020 15:09
Completed: 06 June 2020 11:39
Total time: 1.17 hours
Total earned, if client approves: I never discuss money.
Number of words in title: 5
Number of words in topic: 2
Number of words in document: 1212
Number of characters: 6887
Number of paragraphs: 24
Number of sentences: 54
Number of subheadings: 8
Number of links: 1
Reading level: 11th-12th grade (approximately 16 to 18 year-olds)
Main style: Normal
Font: Arial
Font size: 11
Top heading style: Title
Title font: Arial
Title font size: 26
Subheading style: Heading 2
Heading 2 font: Arial
Heading 2 font size: 16
Number of illustrations: 1
Number of versions: 2
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