In fact, the great fun of being an editorial page editor is that, with all that space to fill, you can write on any length on any subject virtually any time you want to. The drawback, of course, is that there are times when you don't have much to say, but the beast, as they call it, still has to be fed. Necessity breeds invention more times than not. In retrospect, some of my sharpest pieces were written at 6 o'clock on a Friday when a six-inch hole in Monday's ed stack had to be filled. The disadvantage of writing so much and so quickly is that, no matter how hard you try, error creeps in.
Fatalism is obligatory.
An audience in the nation's capital. Three degrees of freedom. Freedom to structure time, especially family time. Freedom from quite so many deadlines. And freedom to say whatever I want.