Keeping to a word count may frustrate some writers but I love the challenge!
As many blog readers know, I write a regular newspaper column for The Carillon. When I started working for the paper some forty years ago, I noticed if my articles were too long, the editor would cut them down to size, often changing them in ways I didn't appreciate.
I soon realised they reserved space in the paper for a 600-word column for me. So, I challenged myself to write my weekly column that exact length. If I did so, the editor just published my pieces as I had written them.
Back then, I wrote my columns on a typewriter and had to painstakingly count my words. Of course, the computer has made all of that so much easier.
For the past thirty years, I have written a week's worth of pieces annually for a meditation magazine called Rejoice. My limit for each of the seven meditations is 250 words. This always seems like such a small number so I don't even think about it when I write my original pieces. I just write till I've said what I have to say.
Sometimes I end up with triple or even quadruple the number of words I'm allowed and then I start CUTTING! And it's amazing how with perseverance and ingenuity I can chop the number of words down to size and still basically say the same thing.
I once went to a lecture by Canadian writer Fredelle Maynard where she encouraged us to make our journalism pieces 'clean as a whistle and bare as a bone.'
Not all the different kinds of writing I do requires that kind of ruthless word elimination but when it does I enjoy the challenge of cutting my written work down to size.
Other posts..............
Recording Our Lives. A Good Idea?
The Joy of Freelancing
Ten Lessons From the Writing Life
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