RDF/RSS Feed
Atom Feed
A brief progress note: this week added 12,834 words to Book III. Since July 12, I’ve added 33,645 to the book. You might think this means I should be able to write 40,000 words of new stuff every month, and thus 480,000 words a year or four 120,000 word novels…but no.
On the business end of writing, in order to produce a book a year, it really helps to be able to put out 2000 words/day, 5 days out of the week, pretty much any time you need to. That’s because Stuff Happens, and despite a writer’s best intentions, most of us find life intruding: we get sick, a family member gets sick, the roof develops a huge leak, a friend develops cancer and needs our support, the hard drive goes click-click-click in that ominous way, the book gets stuck and you have to spend a week figuring out what’s wrong and fixing it, and so on. So to actually write the novel, and revise the novel, and polish the novel takes longer than the daily word count suggests. But if you have a 2000 word/day imagination-engine, it will get you over the ground fast enough to write a book a year.
And a book a year has become the new standard for writers who want to make a living at it…a minimum standard. You can scrape by with a 1000 word/day engine, but you’re going to be writing more than five days/week. (I often do write more than five days/week, but two of those will be light days, more keeping the gears moving than actually making serious progress.)
What keeps me from writing two or more books a year (like Charlaine Harris, whom I like and admire–she has at least two series running now–productivity plus) is that I can’t seem to make up that many plots at once. I sort of melt into the one I’m working on–it takes up all my brain, and it takes it up for months and months. It’s probably related to my inability to outline, which I prefer to think of as an alternate hardwiring of this writer’s brain, and not self-indulgence.
But anyway…Book III is on track and if other Stuff doesn’t land on my head (as it did for three days last week, but I still managed the weekly quota), I won’t have to go into Crunch. Crunch is not fun. Crunch is “Omigod there’s the deadline and I still have this many thousand to go and dividing the words to go by the days…that’s half again or twice or three times what I normally write…panic!” Avoiding Crunch situations is good business (Crunch eats you up physically, mentally, and emotionally, and it’s hard on your family, too.) But we all have Crunch at times…and Crunch is easier to handle if your base level of production is high enough.
For those considering writing long fiction (it’s different for short-story writers) as a career, but not up to 2000 words/day sustained yet, the trick is to start where you’re comfortable. First go for consistency at the rate you can do–five days a week (at least), week after week. You will probably find the wordage inching up, as your “fitness level” increases, but if not, bump it up in 100 words/day increment, each time giving yourself at least a week at the new level, longer if it’s still a struggle most days. Then again. Eventually you’ll sort of plateau at a level that’s your optimal speed–for most people somewhere between 1000 and 2000 words/day. Young, fit, eager people may have base levels as high as 3-4000.
Over the course of several years, though your base speed may not increase, your “reserve” speed will. So if your base speed is 1500–that’s comfortable, reliable, you know you can do it–you’ll also find that if you need to put out 2000 for a short period, you can. It’s a good idea to stretch occasionally just to see if you can and how much faster you can go. Only one day at a time, first, but another time you might try two days in a row of going beyond your base.
The first time I did true Crunch, an editor offered me a lead position (instead of midlist) if I could turn the book in quite a bit early. It was a book I’d conceived clearly, and I was over halfway done when this offer appeared. I was also younger than I am now….and for the requisite time, I wrote 5000 words/day. I’d had no idea I could write that fast if I had to. After that, I knew I had that reserve oomph if I needed it (though these days, hands being what they are, 4000 is really my limit and anything over 3500 is going to require a lot of ibuprofen.) But it’s still to be avoided. And avoiding it is easier with 2000 words/day than 1000 words/day…and 500 words/day is asking for trouble.
Comment by Margaret — July 31, 2010 @ 8:13 am
Have you ever considered using speech-to-text software (such as Dragon Naturally Speaking)? I know that speaking is not the same as writing, but it could be a back-up plan when the hands are hurting and the deadline is approaching.
Comment by elizabeth — July 31, 2010 @ 10:27 am
It’s been suggested, of course. However, the way my mind works, I write more coherently than I talk, when I’m trying to make a long story. I think one of the problems is that I talk in my voice, but I can write in the voices I “hear” from charcters.
Eventually, I may need it, but at this time I’m happier using my hands.
Comment by Joe — July 31, 2010 @ 10:52 pm
You might use speech-to-text for these blog comments. Most of your entries are several hundred words. That’s gotta hurt some and might eventually impact your willingness to further feed my voracious appetite for insights into things elizabethan. I very much appreciate the glimpses you are giving.
Way back in Divided Allegiance you introduced Arvid’s string of jewels. Did you already know way back then that you were going to use that as a macguffin? If so, how the heck do you keep track of all the little things like that to pick them up again?
Really looking forward to more about Arvid. That guy’s a mass of contradictions. Looking forward to having him resolved without being solved.
Comment by Jonathan D. Schor — August 1, 2010 @ 12:31 pm
Write at your own speed. Some authors just spill out words and books. Others take a bit longer. Write well, not necessarily fast.
I just finished listening to Divided Allegiance – kinds of ends on a downer – I will await the third volume on DVD then comes the new book.
Have a nice summer.
Jonathan
Comment by elizabeth — August 1, 2010 @ 7:03 pm
Joe: That necklace seemed out of place when I was writing the DEED–I didn’t know it had a “future” or a “past” but although I tried changing it to something else…it insisted on being there. It stuck in my memory because it seemed so strange and out of place. When the regalia showed up (another surprise) I knew that the necklace was part of it…but not what was going to happen next with any of that stuff.
Jonathan: Believe me, I do write at my own pace–interestingly, though, some of my best writing comes fairly fast–but in chunks, not the whole book in one long sweep. I’m a firm believer in revision, in part because of the way my mind works–without being able to outline up front, I need to get everything out there (like someone designing a quilt–all the fabric scraps out) to really understand what’s gong on and how the pieces best fit together.
John: When I have time (hollow laugh there!!) I’ll be putting a lot more on the Paksworld site. The master map isn’t quite ready for that yet (I need to spend 2-3 days on it and then get it re-scanned) and I’d like to put some of the stories up on that site as well, though my agent may want me to have them Kindled instead. But first…the current book.
Comment by Joe — August 1, 2010 @ 9:56 pm
The necklace was a decidedly odd gift for Arvid to give Paks. Given her reaction to lace and felt hats at Rotengre, it was an odd gift for you to let her accept. Since you did, there had to be more to it. As a way to get back to Arvid whenever you wanted, maybe, but if when you do go back it needs explanation. I think these little features are just evidence of your inner webmistress spinning plots in darkness to be swept to the light of day at need. That could be why you don’t do outlines. It’s more of a path-oriented approach. You sort of lay out a nodal structure and then pick some of the dots to connect. When enough are connected, that’s your plot.
I wondered about a few short stories as chapters kind of like “Those Who Walk in Darkness”. That was well done and fleshed out events in Verella quite well. It could easily have been incorporated into OoG and I’ve wondered why it wasn’t. Whenever I get to that part of the story I have to set OoG down and go find the short story collection so I can read it in context.
Truth to tell, I like just about anything you write however you want to write it.
Comment by elizabeth — August 1, 2010 @ 10:55 pm
Ah, but you see I don’t “let” characters do things, and I stop them or redirect them only when they’re not keeping Story going. And my redirection often results in their going a different direction than I pointed them.
Arvid, in his sophisticated rogue mode, wanted to tempt this young country girl…see if she was anything more than a raw but uptight soldier-girl. Or that’s what he thought his motivation was. It was uncharacteristic for him to be interested in her (and he knew that–it made him uncomfortable and that’s why he kept trying to tempt/nudge/make her into something he was more comfortable with, someone he could dismiss as fitting a known category perfectly.) What, in Arvid, allowed him to recognize something different in Paks? What led to his choice of gifts? Was Someone Else involved?
“Those Who Walk in Darkness” actually did not fit in with OOG…the viewpoint shift wouldn’t work within the book (I tried), not when I needed the other viewpoint shift, to Kieri and then back to Paks. The story was finished later, benefiting from more writing experience. If I’d been able to write it that well at the time I was writing OOG, I might have been able to slide it in–but I couldn’t, then.