oh boi… well, rachel is probably the fastest writer that i know in the whole universe! so whatever she said…triple it, and that’s me.
no but really it usually takes at least 3-6 hours to write a news piece, like something i would publish the same day it happened. i read a lot first, and check a lot of sources, link a lot, investigate a few angles. i get really embarrassed if something is wrong.
a feature story will take somewhere between four hours and four months. the part that takes the most time for me is never the initial writing, though – it’s the research, for starters, ‘cause i’ll get into something and have to read everything ever written about it ever, which takes quite some time – but mainly it’s the part where i obsess over the various negative comments my piece could provoke and then adjust everything in it to make sure nobody that i respect will yell at me. i wish i could let go of that. i just get scared. i want everybody to read this; before they comment on anything, ever. i also spend heaps of time trying to figure out what i can cut to make the piece shorter.
recaps are the hardest and most time-consuming things i write. when i say a recap takes three days, i mean literally three days where it’s the only major post i’m working on. even with grace doing the screencaps, it’s still several hours after that just to upload them, put them into the post and caption them. if i didn’t have grace, i’d be fucked.
i wish i was faster.