Too Many Words

I like this quote:

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

I thought this was from Mark Twain, but originally seems to be from Blaise Pascal in Lettres Provinciales.

When writing English my first drafts usually have too many words. With effort I can revise and make it concise.

A rough metric for me seems to be removing half of my original words (no joke).

Maybe blogging is a chance to practice this.