How many hours will it take to turn those notes into an article with a beginning, middle and end; to tell a story which, in addition to the interviews, requires research, thought and creativity?
I was never very good at producing a statement of work or SOW, nor was I particularly adept at its project-management cousin, the LOE or estimate of the level of effort required to complete that work. Oh, I could estimate how long it took me to prepare for and complete an interview, or to organize and write a story. I could and I did.
But so much of writing is the thinking that precedes and surrounds it. How do you account for the wasted effort, the dead-ends and sidetracks? How do you quantify a process that can never truly be quantified?
How do you explain that the most effortful writing can be leaden and pedestrian — and the least effortful can soar above it all?