On Writing

I’ve been reading a lot of the memorials to David Halberstam this week. Halberstam is one of the Crimson’s Pulitzer Prize alums and so his picture hangs in the hallway of 14 Plympton Street. Jack Shafer’s piece on Halberstam had a quote that I really liked. Halberstam, when told by the Times to generally write his stories to 600 words, wrote, in digust, to J. Anthony Lukas, his fellow Crimson editor and Pulitzer Prize winner:
“There are only two kinds of stories in the world: those about which I do not care to write as many as 600 words, and those about which I would like to write many more than 600 words. But there is nothing about which I would like to write exactly 600 words.”
I have to say that I agree with Halberstam. In my career, I’ve often said that there are two forms of writing I really like