500: The magic number of words required as a minimum when submitting articles. Each week, we, as Odyssey writers, work to meet this word count.
If you think about it, five hundred words isn't actually that much to ask (especially when you write out the word "five hundred," rather than the number). In fact, most essays we write for classes are over that number. The survey questions we fill out at every AP exam always include one that asks us for the number of times we've written an extended essay ("over 500 words") in preparation for that exam; all those practice rhetorical strategies analyses, synthesis essays, DBQs, or analytical literature essays meet that number.
Five hundred words isn't much. In fact, one could just crank out one giant string of words, jumbled together to form sentences that make no sense (for example: "converse flower bottle articulate significant river four") and submit that as our minimum number of words, but most of us wouldn't risk our dignity like that.
Five hundred words isn't much. In fact, most of the time that I'm writing, I go way over that amount without realizing it. I just need more words than a mere five hundred to get all my ideas out. I love words too much to restrict myself; my stream of consciousness takes control as I absentmindedly type out the thoughts flowing from my mind.
Five hundred words isn't much. In fact, I'm already over halfway there. At 281 words, I'm still going strong. It kind of feels like a cross country race, chugging along at the 5 kilometers. By the time I hit 2 miles, I know I only have 1.1 left; no matter how much pain I feel, no matter how badly my shins are splinting (ha), no matter how much my lungs hate me, I know that I can finish off the race. I just think to myself, "You're already over halfway there! You can't give up now! You just have to keep going for a little while longer!" While writing five hundred words doesn't require that kind of encouragement and motivation (because I'm sitting comfortably on a couch, typing away, rather than running in the woods somewhere), it's still a nice feeling to be over halfway done.
Five hundred words isn't much. In fact, I've only got 65 words left. But it's not the number that matters, really—it's the content. It's the thoughts and emotions that we, as writers, have the capability of conveying in such small numbers of words. This article is just twenty-six letters rearranged in various orders (give and take a few numbers as well); every article is just (that was my 500th word!) that. If we don't give our words much thought, they will be meaningless and empty. Language has the potential of communicating every single thing, from ideas to recounting events. They say that a picture is worth more than a thousand words, but if those thousand words have great meaning, no picture will ever be able to match the power of written language. So take this sad excuse of five hundred words and make the most of the message—to make each word count.
