By: Blonde Two
I have been doing a lot of writing recently, which means that I have also been doing a lot of word counting. Apparently, when you write lots of words, you are supposed to count them all. Given the issues that Blondes have with numbers, it is just as well that the computer knows how to do this for me.
It is gratifying when the words build up and run into thousands, but yesterday I had to make a piece of work shorter.
I was writing a Blonde Bimble for a local newspaper, and had been given a word number limit. This proved quite tricky to manage. The first Bimble that I tried was too long; and I had to leave the readers stranded and wet in the middle of a ford. The second attempt was the right sort of length; but when I read it through, I discovered that the readers were in the middle of their most boring walk ever. I think that my third effort has worked out. It is still a bit long, but nobody is stranded and I don’t think that anyone is bored.
Hard work this writing thing!
181 Words
Rather fun to leave them on a mystery tour, stranded in a bog! For the last year and a bit (3 extra words there) I have been reducing 29 or 30 documents a month down to three and a half minutes’ worth of headlines on each of 4 Sundays. I’ve just given up and am thinking of all the wonderful walks and things I can do now I have those hours back!!!!!!
“Had to make a piece of work shorter.”
Or, as you might have said, “cut”.
This, more than anything, separates the pros from the ams. The realisation that the world of writing is not endlessly expandable. That newspapers, for instance, consist of finite space, that other voices clamour to be heard. That our message is only one of several.
Oh, the pain. Getting rid of hard-wrought passages of “fine” prose (like this, for instance) that took ages to fashion. And discovering that even then the passage is too long. Getting rid then of facts, an act that seems like treachery. Learning that certain adjectives may be necessary (eg, three, blue, wooden) but that others, the ones we secretly love, (eg, sublime, nacreous, over-arching) aren’t.
Discovering, unhappily, that the pruned-down piece is better. Unhappily because we realise that earlier we blethered.
Per humiliatio ad astra
That is a fabulous bit of Latin. Through adversity to the stars. A Blonde motto if ever I heard one!