Feature articles make up the bulk of my work, Gina, and I typically am not cranking out several articles per week.

I don’t think it’s about slow or fast writers. It’s more about the lengths and types of the articles, the subject matter, how much research is involved, how many (if any) interviews are required, and whether your client provides leads and sources to get you started or if you have to start from scratch. Finding reliable sources can take a lot of legwork for some articles.

I’m wary of places that require contributors to write 5 or 10 or however many articles per week or per month. Focusing on quantity rather than quality is never a good sign. (That said, I think most of those “articles” are probably mashups, roundups, or glorified blog posts that don’t require any interviews.)

The types of articles I write can take weeks to do, but I’m not working actively on them every day. The biggest time suck is scheduling interviews. (Right now I’m working on three articles but most of the interviews don’t start until next week.) One the interviews are done, I transcribe them. That helps me organize the material in my mind so I can write the article fairly quickly whether it’s 400 words or 2500 words. But I would have done most of the supplemental research while waiting for the call.

I’ve turned some articles around in 24 hours, but that only happens when the interviewees are immediately available. I’ve had weeks in which I’ve written four or five articles, but the research and interviews had all been done in the days and weeks leading up to it. At one point I was actively working on 13 articles at once, but the deadlines were spread out over several weeks.

What types of articles do you enjoy writing?

Hi Gina — not too personal at all.

I’ve never personally just written articles, but I have had two article assignments at the same time. I’ve had as many as seven projects in the same month, which required a list and organizing. It was too much, I thought.

If I were to sit down and write an article, including research but no interviews, a couple of hours? I do have one gig right now that’s blog posts, and I generate the ideas and research. The posts are 500 words, so it’s not a huge job.

Articles with interviews take longer — the interview, any transcribing, then the writing. For me, a 1,500-word article would be about 6-8 hours of work total. That’s stretched out over a few weeks, as not every interview subject is available when you need them.

Does that answer your question?