Size matters

This morning my editor and I had an amusing exchange about a line he singled out for praise in a theater review I filed. I told him I had cut the line, then reinstated it, but I did not do this out of any great aesthetic committment. I just wanted the piece to be the right length.

This took me straight back to graduate school, when I was always in awe of people who turned in papers far longer than the assigned length. For these folks--and sometimes it seemed that everyone did this but me--a ten-page assignment meant a 25-page paper. For me, a ten-page paper was a ten-page paper, which usually meant that I wrote (at most) twelve pages of utter crap, then began revising.

What can I say? I'm stingy with my ideas.