Size Matters (Or Does It?)

How writing short, medium, and long is the best practice

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Last fall, I started a new column of obituaries for The New Yorker. The pieces were supposed to clock in around 1,000 words, or, ideally, a bit shorter. The New Yorker has a famous appetite for long pieces — once, a single story (John Hersey’s report on Hiroshima) took up the entire issue, and over the years there have been…