One way to begin is by deciding how you want to use your 742 words. Do you want two sentences each 371 words long? Or fourteen sentences each 53 words long? Or 53 of fourteen? The possibilities are far from endless, but there are still choices to be made.

Does your title count toward the total words of the essay? If so, then you’re already down by fifteen, which leaves 727 words remaining. 727 is a prime number, meaning your choices would then be limited to 727 one-word sentences, or one sentence 727 words long. And what about the numbers themselves? Is the number “742,” if written in numeric characters, a word? If numbers don’t count, you’ve so far used 137 words, including this sentence; if they do count, you lose eleven more.

Note that 742 has at least eight factors and possibly more (I got bored of pressing buttons on my calculator) with prime factors of 2, 7, and 53. And 742 is decagonal, representing a decagon, a shape with ten sides; it’s also a 37-gonal number, which is illustrated by 742 pebbles arranged in the shape of a polygon with 37 sides. At least, I think that’s what it means.

A pebble is a fragment of rock ranging in size from 4 millimeters to 64, and a beach made of pebbles is called a shingle. Roof shingles are composed of a base material such as paper slathered with asphalt and crusted with granules smaller than 4 mm, and so aren’t germane to the discussion at hand.

I wish 742 divided by three was 241, because 241 is a Filipino rock song, an asteroid, several highways, a helicopter, the Dewey Decimal number for the problem of evil, the Simpson’s house number, and Mirutanku, a berry-loving, Jersey cow Pokemon that produces medicinal milk and yogurt. 

What do you want to write? Consider your subject. The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire is probably not appropriate for just 742 words, but a discussion of Hostess Suzy-Q's versus Little Debbie Devil Cremes might fall short. Personally, I can’t eat any Little Debbie chocolate snack cakes without at some point choking, because Little Debbie’s cake is so dry that, should I inhale while chewing, small particles are inevitably sucked into my airway.

Some fairly ho-hum things happened in the year AD 742, including the favoring of Taoism over Buddhism by the Chinese Tang Emperor, and the absorption of the towns of Spoleto and Benevento into the Kingdom of the Lombards. Saint Sturm established an abbey in Germany in 742, which is kind of cool because “Sturm” is a kick-ass name.

Sturm und Drang was a German literature movement back in the 18th century, and is usually translated as “storm and stress”, though a more literal English equivalent might be “storm and urge,” or “storm and longing.” I once tried to use Sturm und Drang in a prose poem, but it looked and sounded dumb, so I switched to “storm and urge” and fared no better. In the end, I junked the entire thing.

Speaking of poetry, the Chinese poet Li Po, one of the “Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup,” was presented to the Chinese Emperor and given a position in the Chinese Imperial court in 742. That would have been Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the same guy that liked Taoism. Li Po is really good. You should read him.

Seven is a factor of 42, which seems like it should be important somehow. In numerology, 742 combines down to four, which stands for creation, which fits perfectly into a discussion of writing. Since the Chinese have come up several times already, it’s necessary to mention that in Chinese numerology the number four is considered unlucky, being a homophone of the Chinese word for death or suffering. Seven is a vulgar slang word in Cantonese, and two means “easy,” and there’s no question that, in English slang, “easy” is always synonymous with “slut.”

Finally, leave room for tweaking. Inevitably, as part of the editing process, you will need to cut words here or add others there. Include sacrificial conjunctions and modifiers in all early drafts, or create phrases that are easily augmented by slapping on a few extra nouns or adjectives (boney, filstrom, querty, nabob, horny, pickled, terabyte, vegetal, miniscule, persnickety, Absalom).