A Meditation on Word Counts

This past weekend, I curled up on various comfortable surfaces to write my last major assignment of the semester. The required word count was 2,000-2,500 words, or around 8-10 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman size 12. I try not to think about length when I write, because I only procrastinate when I am intimidated by the apparent size and difficulty of the task before me. So, in order to prevent the hysteria that ensues when I am down to the (barbed) wire of a due date, I am forced to trick my own brain. Somehow, this is much easier than it sounds.

First, I type my name, the course title, and the date. "Haha, I have words on the page," I tell myself. "Good job, Alicia. Jolly good show." And then I come up with a suitably impressive-sounding title. This title must include a colon. For example:

Small Stories and the Postcolonial State: The Portrayal of Liminality and Identity in Midnight's Children and Between the Assassinations

Classy, isn't it? It helps when you read "postcolonial" with a snobby British accent. I never fail to do so.

Now that I've wasted all of my creative energy on the title, I save the document and close it. The real writing comes a day or two later. Armed with coffee, baggy sweatpants, and a couch, I do battle with my short attention span. Because I am far more wily than accident-plagued Wile E. Coyote, I have learned how to trick my mind into thinking that I am not working nearly as hard as I actually am. And it involves TV.

I wouldn't recommend multitasking to the faint of heart; many people have spouted facts about the detriments of multitasking, but I have twenty years of anecdotal evidence that it works for me. This habit led to my being dubbed "The Homework Ninja" by the girls of First Timmer my freshman year. The real trick is not the multitasking itself, but the choice of TV show. Usually, I choose action shows. The dialogue isn't fascinating enough to thoroughly distract me from the task at hand, but there's usually a nice explosion or two to lighten the mood.

For my Postcolonial Literature paper, I continued my marathon of 24 with my across-the-hall neighbors. I watched Jack Bauer save Washington D.C. whilst I pounded out 2,497 words of a paper exploring the role of multiplicity in the identity of both individuals and postcolonial nations in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Aravind Adiga's Between the Assassinations. (Both are fantastic books, by the way. Consider them recommended.) 

There was also much hat-wearing in honor of Queen's Day, or Koninginnedag

Normally, I find myself comfortably in the center of the necessary word/page count-- just enough length to satisfy the assignment description (with some wiggle room), but not too close to the upper limit to repel stressed-out and possibly vindictive professors. This time, however, I found myself abridging my conclusion immensely (and I am the queen of lengthly conclusions, as well as the great land of Denial) in order to fall within a reasonable interval around 2,500. Maybe it's the topic I chose, or maybe it's because I actually enjoyed the books I had to write about, but it was especially difficult to leave my paper with such an anticlimactic farewell. But sacrifices must be made for the sanity of all involved, so I saved my work (for the 200th time) and closed Microsoft Word with a sigh of contentment and relief.

And then cheered as Jack Bauer saved a metro station from a biological attack.