I took my placement one step further today. Yesterday, I was writing mainly filler articles and other bits and pieces. Today, while I did a few of those, I also had the opportunity to do two longer pieces. The first was on Neil Daniels, a local writer whose main focus is writing about rock music - be it in book form or as articles in various paper and digital publications. He wrote in to us asking that we do a piece on his forthcoming books 'Don't Stop Believin': The Story of Journey' and 'Rock 'N' Roll Mercenaries - Interviews With Rock Stars Volume II'.

The fun part? I was given about four pages of information to cram into an article of 350 words or less, and I was asked to e-mail Neil to ask a few questions regarding the books.

For this reason, the article took me about an hour and a half. Neil was really co-operative, a lovely bloke even across the digital wastelands, and I got a first draft version of the article down in about 45 minutes... only it was nearly 400 words long. One or two words over the limit isn't something to weep over, but fifty words... well, in a newspaper format, 50 words is huge.

So I spent the next 45 minutes reading and re-reading it, trimming out all the redundant words, rewriting phrases so they'd say exactly the same thing but in less words. You know what? I've never edited anything so extensively in my life. I was obsessive about it. I was surprised by how lean the prose started to sound - I'd previously thought myself incapable of such writing. I was surprised that I managed to edit it down so much but retain all the original detail.

Those of you who were following my Twitter feed today, incidentally, may have been mildly irritated by the constant updating I was doing to keep myself sane as I edited this article.

The second article was my piece on The Prince's Trust. I wrote it this morning with no word limit in mind; I tried to keep it short, obviously, but I wasn't sure how short Steve (the editor) might want it. I reckoned I'd deal with word count limits afterwards. I finished it as a first draft, and was making my first efforts at whittling it down when Steve gave me a few fillers, church news and the Neil Daniels article to do. Then, when these were all out of the way, I decided to peek at it again.

The first draft was 501 words - don't get me wrong, I'd said a lot with those words. I can't comment, being only two days into the journalism business, but I'd say it was still shockingly long. It urgently needed trimming. I decided to use the length of the Neil Daniels piece as a guideline; so I'd be shaving 501 down to about 350 - taking off 150 words. Taking off a mere 50 on the Neil Daniels one had made my brain melt. I watched the blinking cursor at the end of my article, wrote my will and started the wordy slaughter.

It took me about an hour and left me with a mild headache, but I did it. Again, I couldn't believe that I'd removed so many words but retained everything I'd originally set out to say. And I was proud of myself - if I could reduce an article - something which I'd written quite concise in the first place - to two thirds of its original size, what could I do to something big and messy like 'The Great Couch Happening of '69'?

So I managed it, twice, and I'm immensely happy with myself. I actually allowed myself a lunch break today - I think I needed it to let my brain recover. I tried shopping round for debit card-friendly food places and came up with McDonalds. So I sat there on my own, munching away, and then Dave jumped out at me from nowhere. His placement only starts on Thursday, which sounds like the laziest job ever, but his hours are ridiculous. We finally gets to go home at 10pm. He works on weekends. This has caused a bit of a faff regarding transport as he a) lives in St Helens, b) has to work in Newton Boys' & Girls' Club and c) has hours that fall outside the validity period of our college-issue bus passes. They're only valid from 6AM - 8PM on weekdays.

I got back to work, vowing to be smart and bring in my own food from now on. It's not that I loathe McDonalds, it's that I hate having to use my card for things that only cost £3.99. Plus, the amount of food shops that accept debit cards in St Helens town centre is limited, as you can see. And home-made stuff is cheaper, tastier, more filling and healthier - unless you make your own bread out of diamond-encrusted lard. Which is expensive, vile, virtually inedible and unhealthy.

My second major task for the day was to trawl the websites of all the local theatres and arts centres. Since the entertainment section of the St Helens Star had to be finished tonight, I was given the task of finding out what would be on; plays, gigs, stand-up comedians and the like. I wasn't told exactly how extensively I had to research, so I decided to play it safe and look up all the shows in March in St Helens and Liverpool. I managed to cover The Citadel and the Theatre Royal (the main priorities, since they're both in St Helens), as well as the Liverpool Empire Theatre. When I consulted Steve on it, he said it was fine as long as I covered the St Helens entertainment news - which I did, rather extensively. He said that it might be a good idea to cover Liverpool and Manchester as well, so they'd have something to take up any empty space.

All in all, I've done well. I hope I have, anyway. It certainly feels like I have. I've done so much work that my brain's screaming for a rest, but that's a good thing. I'm knackered but fulfilled.

I'm still bloody glad that I went for this placement. If anything, I'm more chuffed with it today than I was yesterday. I couldn't help this big, stupid grin on the way home. And today, for the second time in a row, I had to be reminded by the others that 'it's getting late, are you sure your college allows you to stay so long?' - that says it all. If I hated the job, I'd be constantly eyeing the clock, waiting for the time to go home. I usually get too much into my work to notice the time pass by.

What have I learned today?

• Whittling a 500 word article down to 350 words = CAN BE DONE!
• Editing articles becomes much harder as you progress. You have to look more closely to spot the less obvious errors and redundant words. You have to think carefully about how to rewrite bits so they say the same thing in less words.
• A minute wasted is a minute lost forever.
• Bakeries hate credit cards.
• No matter how much my computer pesters me, I will not restart it to finalise an update!
• The eleventh commandment, according to Kelza: THOU SHALT DO THY COMPLICATED COLLEGE PAPERWORK.

We have to keep a detailed record of when we start and finish, along with a diary of what we do... can't I just print off my LiveJournal entries and hand them in? Surely they'll have all the detail the college wants, plus more!

Oh, I forgot to mention: my hours were from 9:30 - 5:30 today. I'd get my supervisor to sign but I'm a) not sure of who that is b) convinced it's Steve who c) isn't here and d) would find it awfully hard to sign a digital document - oh, not to mention e) none of the above.

For your reading displeasure, I will follow this entry up with the articles I've written today. F'locked, as usual.