Read this column for at least 12 seconds

The world will end in seven days. Elvis was spotted in Kalamazoo. With Jim Morrison. President Obama was born on the planet B6-12. Apple announces the new iPhone 7q with 3-D girly photos technology. Moscow in flames; missiles headed for New York! 

That’s it. That’s 12 seconds.

According to a writing advice article I read a couple days ago, that’s all the time a writer has to “grab the attention” of the average reader. If you can’t snag ‘em in 12 seconds, you go unread.

Blame it on the proliferation of “junk writing” online, if you like. Or on schools forced to teach kids to test, rather than to think. Or on streaming video, or rap music, or Obama or Bush or the Tooth Fairy.

Doesn’t matter. It still comes down to that 12 seconds. 

For whatever reason, the average reader has (according to the aforementioned article) the attention span of a goldfish. That means if you’re still reading this (and you are), you’re above average. 

Good for you, and for me, too, since they pay me to write this and I’d very much like them to keep doing so.

But I’m still worried about that 12 seconds. The article I read said this 12 second rule wasn’t always in play. There was a time  a writer could meander away for a few paragraphs or even pages — if that’s where the muse took him — and then get around to the point somewhere down the line.

Not anymore. Now, the article claims, a writer must offer up explosions, car chases, soft-core pornography or murder in the first paragraph. Otherwise, well, he’s writing for himself.

Or herself, if he’s a woman.

At any rate, I personally HATE that 12 second rule. I think the 12 second rule may well be the final nail in an already tightly sealed coffin. This is particularly true when the rule is inexpertly applied by hack and newbie writers. (I’m talking about writers even worse than me and yes, there is such a thing.)

I see examples of this all the time in those 99-cent bargain ebooks trumpeted on Amazon, most of which aren’t as good as prose you can read for free on the wall of any gas station bathroom.

“For a good time, call Monica!” is far superior to some of the self-published pabulum I’ve paid money for online.

Makes me glad I’m a geezer. I grew up with Thurber, Yeats, Bradbury, Asimov, Welty, all of whom spread their golden treasures beneath a susurrating mantle of language, of words.

If you wanted that gold, you had to dig, sometimes deeply. But it was worth it.

So. Though I’m not fit to brush the sand from the flip-flops of Thurber or Bradbury, I’m going to continue to ignore the 12 second rule. I’m not going to write for the “average” reader.

I’m going to write for you. 

And the money, of course. Guy’s gotta eat.