MetaJess

Longform is ready-aim-fire for me. I aim in the lede, first 300-400 words, and then launch the thing on a ballistic trajectory of a 4000-6000 words. Which means if I can't aim right in the opening, the whole thing is a failure, landing far from where I intended

Needless to say, read-fire-aim with in-flight course corrections would be much less stressful. Or at least waypoint-to-waypoint. But I haven't yet learned to break up my ideas that way

There is a valley of death between about 3000 and 15,000 words where structural/developmental editing is very difficult. Longer than 15k, you can use the outlining strategies of books. Shorter than 3000 words, you can kinda wing the ballistics and still end up on target.