A Lean, Mean, 600-Word Blogging Machine

December 2, 2006 |

Having this blog means that I have to do quite a bit of writing. I like writing. I always have. So when I saw an ad seeking freelance writers in my latest issue of Referee Magazine, I decided to contact the editor. He read the blog and liked what he saw. Consequently, I will be writing a freelance article (and hopefully more than one) for Referee. Referee is the premier officiating industry trade publication, so I am obviously humbled by the opportunity.

The reason that I mention this is because one of the style guidelines for freelance articles in the magazine is that they be 400-600 words in length. At first, I thought to myself, “no problem.” Once I put fingers to keyboard, I discovered that getting my point across in 400-600 words is proving to be a bit more difficult than I thought for my first article.

I decided that what I need is some practice. Honestly, I’m not exactly the world’s most verbose writer, but I’m no Earnest Hemingway, either. Either way, no prose is ever hurt by a bit of fat-trimming. As such, I am going to do my best to make sure that my future posts on The Real Estate Zebra weigh in under 600 words (excluding quoted text). The way I see it, 400-600 words should be adequate to get most points across, and it is about as much as many readers are willing to take. I fully expect that there will be some issues that will require more than 600 words to effectively tackle, but I may just split those up into multiple posts.

This 600-word experiment should prove to be interesting, and in the end, an improvement to my own writing. Anything that makes me better makes the blog better as well.

[tags] real estate, realtor, virginia, charlottesville, blog, blogging, officiating, referee, writing [/tags]

Posted by Daniel | Filed Under Blogging, General Info, Officiating 

Comments

6 Responses to “A Lean, Mean, 600-Word Blogging Machine”

  1. Greg Swann on December 2nd, 2006 1:57 am

    Congratulations, Daniel. For what it’s worth, when I have to write to a length, I’ll do 125%–150%, then trim back as I edit. Things get nicely tight just like that.

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  2. Daniel Rothamel on December 2nd, 2006 2:08 am

    Greg,

    That is good advice, thanks. The topic for my article is proving to be difficult in 400-600 words, but I am determined.

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  3. Athol Kay on December 2nd, 2006 7:04 am

    The word limit freedom is the beauty of blogs. The ability to play with HTML is great too. Regular text seems clumsy now.

    It’s always cool that the blogs open up new oppotunities though.

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  4. Jonathan Dalton on December 2nd, 2006 9:33 pm

    Ever since I my days at the Capitol Times I proved I can write (and write and write) on any topic with no issues. The flipside is in my sportswriting work for the Associated Press, where adjectives rarely are allowed, there usually is a 300 - 400 word limit on initial stories (unless it’s a New York team - this one is an unofficial policy.)

    Sometimes verbosity is more difficult to contain (as proven by my 250-word effort on a Mexican league soccer friendly or even by more response here.)

    600 words is tough. 1,000 is a decent balance, but that’s just me.

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  5. Michael Price on December 4th, 2006 10:25 pm

    Congratulations on the new gig, you will do well. I’ve always loved to write. My fear has always been that my punctuation skills are so bad. Grammar and sentence structure are an issue as well. I decided when I started my blog to throw caution at the wind and go for it. My biggest fear now is that my oldest daughter will start reading the blog. When she does I will be spending a great deal of time in the corner with my dunce cap firmly in view. Oh well, I’m still happy that I’ve raised kids that are smarter than me!

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  6. Roberta Murphy on December 19th, 2006 4:18 am

    Congratulations on the new gig and goal! You are one pithy zebra and I am adding you to my blogroll.

    [Reply]

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