Concerning Rule V

In Writing the Libertarian Op-Ed (which I've been meaning to revise and re-issue for years ... and WTF, it's been TWENTY of those years now?) I list six rules for writing op-eds.

Rule V is "Practice Parsimony."

Unless you’re the Unabomber, you don’t get to ramble on at book length in your local paper’s editorial section. You have to accomplish your mission tightly, using the minimum number of words to make your point well. ... If you submit your article to a newspaper as is, at 500 words versus the 400 specified in the newspaper’s guidelines, it may still be published. In those guidelines, you’ll likely have noted that the editor “reserves the right to edit for length.” You can cut it down to 400 words. Or the editor can cut it down to 400 words. Who do you trust to know your thoughts and priorities better? Yourself or that editor? Do you want the piece to reflect your priorities, or his? Cut it until it bleeds. Someone is going to. 

Looking back, I should probably have practiced more parsimony there.

I've been thinking about this rule a lot lately.

When I worked at C4SS, I encouraged our writers to keep their submissions to 800 or fewer words to maximize the likelihood that an op-ed would be picked up.

When I started the Garrison Center, I set a rule that I've broken maybe once or twice myself: Keep the op-eds within the 400-500 word range. That seemed like the "sweet spot" to fit within most newspapers' guidelines and maximize media pickups (especially in print publications where there are a certain number of pages and a certain number of column inches available, as was the case when I started writing for newspapers).

The other regular writer at Garrison, Joel Schlosberg, usually breaks that rule -- on the low side, 300-400 words.

And he gets pickups.

I broke it myself today (350 words). I'll be interested to see how that works out.

You might think that it's easier to write a short op-ed than a long one.

You'd be wrong ... in most cases. It's easy to ramble on (as you can tell from this blog). For most people, it's hard to compress an argument or arguments into a minimalist format.

It was hard for me when I first started focusing on this particular format. These days, it's second nature. In fact, I have to work harder to write a 600-800 word piece than a 400-500 word piece. On the blog, I can let myself go. When writing an op-ed, something in my brain just keeps tapping the brake even when I'm not consciously considering word count.