I did not link to this article yet, but if you want to read a bit of my experiences in Turkey, I’d say click on the link and head on over to Turkish Daily News.
The history of this article is actually quite funny: it was the first I wrote for TDN and they told me that I should write an article of 5000 characters. Being the idiot I am, I forgot about the ‘characters’ and only remembered the ‘5000’ part. Besides that, since I am a student I think in word counts (and if you write for American newspapers the number of words is what matters, not the number of characters). So, I transformed the characters in my mind into ‘words’ and the result was that I was writing for three hours, talking to my girlfriend, asking her for advice and memories, until I was finally finished and ready to send it to TDN.
What I sent to TDN greatly surprised the editor: she expected to receive 1.5 pages. Instead, she received a document of 15 pages. I had written 5900 words and described my vacation (and feelings) in great detail. I got a message “can I call you?” Of course I said “yes,” and a few minutes later it was explained to me that, although she was very impressed by the quality (and quantity) of my piece, I had to shorten it a bit.
Well, a bit – I had to scrap 90%.
So, after drinking a bottle of beer laughing at my own stupidity I went to work and the article linked to above is the result.
Yes it’s funny.
Especially if it happens to someone else.
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