Nicolas Cole argues that writers obsess over word count when readers actually care about substance. A generic 2,000-word listicle fails just as badly as a short one. Real value comes from insights that capture attention, not from charging by the word.
All right, Rule 9, word count is a poor measure of value. So this is something I really learned ghostwriting for founders and executives. At the end of the day, the client, the reader, the customer, they do not care how many words it is. You know, they don't care if it's 700 words or 1400 words. What they care about is, what are you saying? What is the piece saying? And more importantly, what is the value of reading that piece? You know, a nice little exercise I love taking writers through is putting two different listicles side by side and going, if you clicked on this piece and it was teaching you, you know, how to start writing on the Internet. And the first three pieces of advice were, you really gotta try, you gotta not give up, and you gotta follow your passion. You would read that and go, that was not worth my time. Now, does the word count have anything to do with it? No, of course not. What matters is what the words are saying. And so a mentality that I notice a lot of broke writers stay caught in is they measure their value by word count. You can see it in their business model. You know, these writers on upwork will charge per word. Well, the number of words is not what's important. What's important is, can you help someone else, in this case, ghostwriting for other clients? Can you help them say something different? Can you help them articulate something that is so valuable that it's worth someone giving their attention for 30 seconds or a minute or in a book, you know, hours, hours and hours? So I remind writers of this all the time. Word count is a very poor measure of value.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
