Journalist Ezrha Jean Black in Hollywood. For more photo goodness, Visit my flickr photostream.
The novelist John Braine remarked that "A writer is someone who writes; a writer is someone who counts words." [My emphasis].
Writers are paid by the word. If interviews with writers were really about writing -- instead of publicity for the purpose of selling books -- the colloquy would center on word count, instead of characters, plot, etc. Journalists would discuss expense accounts.
Earl Stanley Gardner -- famous for the "Perry Mason" stories -- said that, when he was starting out, writing pulp fiction, that in gunfights, no one ever died from the first bullet. "I was being paid by the word, and I made sure that the every bullet in every clip was fired before anybody died!"
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