If nothing else, still writing for magazines forces discipline. I’m writing my next back page for Stuff, which has a strict 530-character limit per text block. The current edit is 720. Time to kill some darlings, so to speak.
EDIT 1: 583. So close! And now things get really difficult…
@chrisphin 100%. Stuff still mostly commissions in words, but I long ago asked for character counts for my regulars when the poor production editor realised how ‘densely’ I write when space is at a premium. He was having trouble cutting anything I submitted down, even though I’d satisfied the commission targets.
@craiggrannell I can’t remember what the number was now, but I did some analysis before switching to character counts for my commissions… was that just for Tap!, or did I do it before that at MacFormat? Can’t remember. But anyway: character counts were significantly more accurate, unsurprisingly, and while they do require a tiny adjustment to, kinda, the pace of writing, they’re better for this reason!
@chrisphin I remember it at Tap!, and imagine without it those 1/8 page reviews would have been sheer hell for your prediction editor! I’m not sure if you’d already done this at MF, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
And I totally agree re accuracy. I so often see editors grumbling about copy coming in way under or over with word counts, but that never happens with character-count commissions, unless the original count was off.
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