waider | if I were king...

Actually, not king, but editor: if an article makes some reference to its own length (case in point: Bill Drummond's No Music Day piece[1]), I would discount that from the actual article length and chastise the author accordingly (and possibly even edit it out of the finished piece). Same goes for any filler paragraphs describing the writing process of said article, unless of course the article is actually about the writing process. I really don't care that it's hard to write about subject X, that's why you're a writing producer and I'm a writing consumer.

[1] Yes, I realise this is a blog, not an article. Don't care. I'm being curmudgeonly, I can make up the rules.