Writing to a fixed length, as one usually has to for magazine articles, and many short story markets, is a strange business.  If you write regularly for one particular market, or alternatively write well ahead and get several articles written in one concentrated burst, you will find your brain tends to 'cut as it goes'.  Before long most of the stuff for that market will come in quite close to length on the first draft.

   But...  and it's a really irritating 'but', if you need to step up from say 500 to 700, you will find the same 'mental margins' and 'word budget' applying themselves automatically to the supposedly longer work.  Adding in new text without spoiling the flow can be far more difficult than cutting out.  Sometimes the new material will stick out like a sore thumb.

    Often the way around this is to deliberately re-write it over-length, tackling it as new project rather than a bodge-job, thus restoring the 'flow'.  Then cut the whole thing.  Done this way you will find fairly equal amounts of old and new material will offer themselves for redundancy.  This sounds like a lot of work for nothing I know.  But it's all good practice, and well worthwhile if it gets you the sale and an invitation to write for them again.

   To an editor you are only as good as your last piece.  The readers may forgive a slight slackness if they've come to love you, but the man who signs the cheques has a right to expect consistency.

   No matter how competent we become writing is a continuous apprenticeship.  We are always learning.  If not we stagnate.

   Here's a joke which sums it all up.  Yehudi Menuhin, the famous violinist, was on his way to perform in London, but his taxi broke down not far from the venue.  He decided to walk the rest of the way, violin case tucked under his arm,, but became slightly lost.  Fortunately he heard a violin playing and found a busker on a street corner.

   "Excuse me, Friend.  How do I get to the Albert Hall?"

   "Practice, Man.  Practice."

   Gyppo