A brief progress note:\u00a0 this week added 12,834 words to Book III.\u00a0 Since July 12, I’ve added 33,645 to the book.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0\u00a0 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,\u00a0 a friend develops cancer and needs our support,\u00a0 the hard drive goes click-click-click in that ominous way,\u00a0 the book gets stuck and you have to spend a week figuring out what’s wrong and fixing it, and so on.\u00a0\u00a0 So\u00a0 to actually write the novel, and revise the novel, and polish the novel takes longer than the daily word count suggests.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And a book a year has become the new standard for writers who want to make a living at it…a minimum standard.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can scrape by with a 1000 word\/day engine, but you’re going to be writing more than five days\/week.\u00a0 (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.)<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Crunch is not fun.\u00a0\u00a0 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!”\u00a0 Avoiding Crunch situations is good business (Crunch eats you up physically, mentally, and emotionally, and it’s hard on your family, too.)\u00a0 But we all have Crunch at times…and Crunch is easier to handle if your base level of production is high enough.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 First go for consistency at the rate you can do–five days a week (at least), week after week.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Then again.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually you’ll sort of plateau at a level that’s your optimal speed–for most people somewhere between 1000 and 2000 words\/day.\u00a0\u00a0 Young, fit, eager people may have base levels as high as 3-4000.<\/p>\n
Over the course of several years, though your base speed may not increase, your “reserve” speed will.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a good idea to stretch occasionally just to see if you can and how much faster you can go.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Only one day at a time, first, but another time you might try two days in a row of going beyond your base.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was a book I’d conceived clearly, and I was over halfway done when this offer appeared.\u00a0\u00a0 I was also younger than I am now….and for the requisite time, I wrote 5000 words\/day.\u00a0 I’d had no idea I could write that fast if I had to.\u00a0\u00a0 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.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But it’s still to be avoided.\u00a0 And avoiding it is easier with 2000 words\/day than 1000 words\/day…and 500 words\/day is asking for trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A brief progress note:\u00a0 this week added 12,834 words to Book III.\u00a0 Since July 12, I’ve added 33,645 to the book.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}