I was listening to this episode of the All Write, Already! podcast, and was struck by the writer Eula Biss' notion of having a preferred "unit of thought".
She's just written a full book on immunity, wellness, and motherhood, but she says that her most comfortable "unit of thought" remains the 1,000-word essay. So much so that the entire book is written as a series of small, 1000-or-so-word chapters, in fact.
I really like the idea that every writer has an ideal unit of thought, actually. It makes me feel OK about not being excellent at writing long form essays or novellas or microfiction. Maybe I don't have to train myself to write in a different mode. Maybe I can just embrace my preferred "unit of thought" and find a way to apply it to all kinds of writing projects.
My most comfortable unit of thought is 2000-2500 words. That's about the length (and the level of complexity) that I can reach in one sitting with no breaks. When I write long work, my chapters are almost always that size. When I start a short story, that's about how far I get the first time around. That's about how much thought I can produce on a subject at once, if I want things to remain coherent. So 2000-2500 words is my ideal "unit of thought", and therefore maybe everything I write could be comprised of those units.
Some writers have really short units of thought, and some writers think in 10,000 word, macro chunks -- and all of that is fine. That's the hypothesis, anyway. And it's really comforting. Because even though Biss' ideal unit is 1000 words, she was able to craft a whole book that spans a ton of research and years of personal experience. She didn't try to overcome her unit-of-thought preference, or change the way she works. Instead, she just wrote a fucking ton of 1000-word sections and organized them to make a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts.
And it seems to me that any writer could do that. You could write a book of many 500-word mini-chapters, or a sprawling epic that consists of a few 10,000-word mega sections. The idea of the "unit of thought" suggests that if a writer has a certain 'tic' or a preferred method or style, that's fine, and it doesn't have to be overcome. It should just be worked with, adapted, and put to use. So often as writers we are fighting against our own strengths, seeing our persistent preferences and talents as limitations. But instead, maybe we can work with what we do best, and put those skills to use no matter the nature of the writing project. I hope so anyway.