Categories: random
Tags: essay, word limit, random
Date: 17 January 2006 22:51:37
After whingeing about the 8000 word essay I had to mark and chuntering away about how the student really needed to be less attached to his ideas and words and chop a load of them out, today I wrote the book review that I had promised Katie months ago for the journal for which she is book editor. My limit was 1000 words, and when I finished and did the word count I found that I'd written - er - quite a bit more than that. And every word I chopped out to get it down to the limit broke my heart - how could the review possibly be so good or read so well without that devastating insight or awesome analysis? Sigh - I'm such an old gasbag, with a hopelessly inflated sense of my own importance, and the importance of my witterings. But at least I know that. I'll just have to pray that 8000-word-boy learns that lesson himself before the next essay.
I got it down to exactly 1000 words though. Which did make a satisfactory ending to the whole traumatic process.