But this one starts with "Over the summer of 2011, the water in Lake Michigan turned crystal clear. Shafts of angled light lit the lake bed, like searchlights from a U.F.O.; later, old sunken ships came into view from above."... oh, I see... nevermind... :)

Yeah. That garden path caused me to elide a paragraph or two, but the rest of the story was worth my persistence.

Not going to lie, that made me laugh out loud.

But in all honesty, that's literally the only think I like about TNY articles... they start so prettily.

I completely agree the articles are just way to self-indulgent when it comes it to length... writing compelling and succinct prose makes a writer great.

Name one great author that wrote succinctly, besides Hemingway, Mark Twain, or Orwell. Or the Spartan poets. /s

thank you. yes. that nails it. it's ridiculous. so many of these 29 paragraph articles could be 3 paragraph articles.

writers paid by the word. doctors paid by the number of treatments.

this is why we can't have nice things.