Working the word count

My instructions are to write a 700-word column for WORLD but I have never once done that in nine years. I have dipped to 680 and more often pushed the upper limit to 740. Come on, writing isn't factory widget-making, that we should get it to the 1/10,000 of an inch.

I tinker, I tease, I jettison with ease; I compact and compress and my druthers suppress. I "kill the little darlings" and adverbs evict, all in attempts at a precision fit. But still no seven hundred sweet spot.

One day I asked my friend Bubba, a Christian inmate in Texas, to write a letter I could pass to my son Jae, an inmate in Ohio. I gave no instructions other than that. Bubba came through but when I tried to relay the communiqué, it got returned from Ohio stamped "Refused: Prison to Prison Mail." I wrote to Bubba: "Sorry, we lost, brother." Bubba wrote back, "No weapon forged against you will prosper."

I said, "Alright, alright," and got an idea. I started typing "Hello Jae" into a Word document, and when I got to the end, "Bubba," I clicked on "word count": 700. Bingo. I sent it off to WORLD. No prison law says I can't send my son a magazine article.