There is an old saying that goes something like: “You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, you can have it good. Pick any two.” Meaning that if you want it fast and cheap, it won’t be good; if you want it fast and good, it won’t be cheap; and if you want it good and cheap, it won’t be fast.
Unfortunately, when it comes to writing, price often drops out of the equation completely, because how much the editor pays is determined in contract negotiations that are generally unrelated to deadline. One thus ends up with “You can have it fast, or you can have it good, but not both.” This attitude has been around so long that it has percolated down to the reader level, leading to lots of grumbling when a writer puts out books “too fast.” Often, the grumbling gets done by people who haven’t even read the book…and who refuse to do so on the grounds that “anything written that fast can’t be any good.”
As usual with this kind of thing, there is a grain of truth in it that is being blown up into a zeppelin-sized, wrong-headed rule. The grain of truth is this: Every writer has a writing speed that works for them, and trying to push stuff out faster than this speed results in a drop in quality. This does not, however, translate into “writing six books in a year is too fast; they can’t be any good” applied to all writers, because the “too fast” production speed varies from writer to writer.
I know professional writers for whom taking less than a year and a half to write a novel is “too fast” – it results in a drop in quality. I also know professional writers for whom writing a book in less than two weeks is “too fast” for the same reason…but taking three weeks makes no difference in quality that I can find. Yet the slower writers are admired, while the faster ones are castigated for scrimping on quality.
The really odd thing is that the folks who think that three weeks is “too fast to write a good novel” are often the very same people who proclaim that quality work comes through inspiration – and that when one is inspired, one can sit and write golden sentences for hours on end without effort (though they’ll allow the writer to complain of cramps in their hands at the end). Apparently, writers are not allowed to be inspired for an entire novel’s-worth of material at once, and inspiration is supposed to take time off between chapters and novels so that their publication dates will be properly spaced.
There’s another problem that arises when critics, reviewers, and the general reading public make judgments of quality based on the perceived speed of writing, and that is that the number of books a writer has coming out in any given year does not necessarily have anything much to do with how fast those books got written. It can take a long time for a book to work its way through the whole publication cycle, even for a much-published author.
When one works steadily at a book-per-year pace, one can easily end up with three or four unpublished novels in the pipeline. If one is delayed (there’s a printer’s strike, the cover artist was backed up, there were three other books with a similar theme coming out that year and the publisher pushed it back to avoid competition) and one is rushed forward (there was a sudden gap in the schedule because someone else didn’t deliver on time, and this book was done), one can easily end up with three titles coming out in the same year.
If the writer has been working on spec (that’s “on speculation” for freelance fiction writers, not “to specification” as it would be for freelance article writers), and has had to submit a series project a couple of times before it sells, it’s easy to end up with even more new titles coming out in one year. And then there are those “trunk stories” – the ones written ages ago that just didn’t find a market, and that have been sitting in a trunk (real or metaphorical) for years until a random conversation with an editor suddenly results in a sale. On occasion, I’ve heard readers complaining about a “too fast” writer because they didn’t realize that the books they were complaining about were a big chunk of the writer’s backlist that had been written and published years before, and were being reissued to a new audience.
And then there are the books that the writer has been thinking about, and sometimes researching, for years or even decades before sitting down to put them on paper in a white-hot rush. Again, the assumption seems to be that no one could possibly work on more than one novel or story at a time, even though author’s papers are freqently littered with bits and pieces of not-yet-written stories, partial manuscripts, and various other scraps that were obviously produced at a time when the author was supposedly concentrating on some other, now finished, project.
What this means is that readers can’t tell how long it took the author to write a book. There’s not much point in explaining all this to them, though it can be fun to mention (if you know it) that the literary masterpiece about which someone is currently waxing lyrical took a grand total of six weeks to write from the first typing of “Chapter One” to “The End.” The point is that if you happen to be a really fast writer, don’t worry about it…and don’t let anyone tell you that you have to slow down in order to write well. If you happen to be really slow, the same caveat applies in reverse: Don’t let people tell you that you have to speed up. There is no One-Size-Fits-All process. Figure out what works for you, and then keep doing that.
Given that every writer has some speed of writing at which quality suffers, how is a new writer to figure out which quality flaws are from pegging that writing odometer and which are just from craft skills that simply have not be learned yet?
It seems that using the speed of your process as a metric for identifying where immediately useful techniques might exist is a valuable way to guess what unknown elements of the craft are out there waiting to be learned. Of course where a writer would go next to learn that missing bit of craft is an even larger challenge… So maybe it doesn’t really matter if a writer has general ideas of what they don’t know yet.
To get it faster, does adding writers do any good? or does it slow down the process as they each “contribute” to the bit that’s already done?
@David Y.
I can’t speak to writing novels, but I know that in software companies there’s a rule of thumb that says “Adding more programmers to a late project makes it later.”
This is because the original programmers are now spending their time bringing the new programmers up to speed, instead of working on the project.
P.S. The reference for that rule of thumb is “The Mythical Man-Month” by Fred Brooks.
I don’t think I’ve ever faulted an author for writing too fast. That just means I get to read more of their books! Of course, I’m on the slow side and will probably be one of those people who put out one book every year and a half to two years …
Thank you! I had been worrying about this very topic. I am a slow writer. At the beginning of a story, when I am still feeling my way, connecting emotionally with my characters and the undercurrent of the piece, I manage only about 170 words per hour. (Ouch!) Once the story is really going and I can feel the current as strongly as if I were indeed swimming in it, I “zip” along (still slow) at about 450 words per hour. I had read that the vast majority of writers manage 1000 words per hour . . . and wondered if I were hopelessly in the wrong field. But I love writing stories (and am miserable when I’m *not* writing), and plan to continue doing it. Your exploration of the subject reassures me that perhaps my pace is simply my pace.
I’m finding it a little discouraging that taking two years to complete a novel is considered “slow”….
J.P. – If you’re pushing too hard, you can usually tell, the same way you can tell the difference between running and walking.
David – Adding a writer? Do you mean, hiring someone to ghostwrite, or do you mean bringing in a collaborator at the last minute? I don’t know anybody who does either, but based on my experiences with collaborating, I doubt that either one would work very well.
LizV – A novel a year is about average for a lot of professionals, I’d say; two years is getting out to the edge of “you can actually make a living writing” territory, unless you’re a mega-bestselling author. First novels tend to take a LOT longer, and speed does tend to improve as one gets more experienced.
Fair point about making a living at it. But it’s still a bit like reading a salary survey where what you make is below the bottom of the chart. 😉
My first novel took me about three and a half years. The second one was on track to be done in two years (before real-world events killed my plot), so arguably I’m headed in the right direction. Apparently I’ve worked my way *up* to “slow”!
Jaenii – My per-hour speed is comparable to yours (on a good day…). I’ve managed to up my output, but mostly only by upping the hours. So it’s not just you, FWIW.
Across the Great Barrier is on it’s way to me.. I just read Thirteenth Child and really enjoyed it!
I have been away from fantasy for too long..
I also just read the Harp of Imach Thyssel, and enjoyed it, too.
So.. I just wanted to find you and say thank you for the entertaining reads!
LizV – Thanks. My first novel took me 3 years to write, BUT I was not able to write more than 3 days a week for about 4 hours each day. There were also some months when I did not write at all. My writing “stamina” and my circumstances changed in the third year of writing the book, so that I was writing 5 days a week for about 5 hours each. And my speed had improved in that mid-to-end-of-story flow. I *do* hope my speed will continue to increase as I continue to write. But I still get daunted when I read too many blogs about speedier writers. Like you, I upped my output by upping my hours.
LizV – Three years for a first novel is right on track; mine took about five, and I know folks who took eight or ten years to finish the first one. My second took two years; for most writers, #2 is still well within the part of the learning curve where things slow down every time you hit something you’ve never done before. Comparing your speed to that of someone who’s been a published writer, making a living at it for five or ten years, is like comparing your tennis game to that of somebody who’s competing at a professional level. It’s not reasonable.
Kath – Thank you.
Jaenii – See above. Also, 5 hours per day, 5 days per week is a LOT of writing time, and you deserve big pats on the back for doing that.
Thanks! 😀 Beaming and feeling a little more hopeful about getting faster as I continue writing. (Working on a novella now. I think it’s going to be a novella — in that 17,500 to 40,000 word range — but final word count is still hard to assess at this stage.)
You mean the twenty-odd years I spent messing around with short stories, fanfic, and the like before I started my first novel doesn’t count? 😉
Though I was always a slow writer even in that crowd. And really, it’s not the comparison to other writers that makes me want to speed up; it’s all the other ideas waiting to be written.
“Apparently, writers are not allowed to be inspired for an entire novel’s-worth of material at once, and inspiration is supposed to take time off between chapters and novels so that their publication dates will be properly spaced.”
How beautifully catty. What else can inspiration do when it is inspired? Some people do not think their ideas through; you skewered that one nicely.