The Novel, and Writers Write
In Today's Journal
* Writers Write
* The Novel Will Wrap Today
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Writers Write
Diane Darcy
Diane Darcy, a prolific, best-selling Romance writer recently wrote,
"I’m using pre-orders to put out a book every month. I just started. It works for me too. But I would like to write one every two weeks as well."
It pleases me to report that apparently Diane is shadowing me (maybe, and if so I'm flattered) in the same way I shadowed Dean Wesley Smith for so long. If so, I'm glad for her. More power to her.
But putting out a novel every month is nothing to sneeze at, and I congratulate her on that.
Naturally (it’s what I do), I also offered a little advice. I thought my response might touch some of you too:
To begin increasing your production, I recommend setting or increasing your daily word count goal.
To find that, divide the number of words in your “typical” novel by 15. Then add 250 words (a quarter-hour if you write 1000 wpd, or 17 wpm) to make yourself stretch just a little. The resulting number will be your new daily goal. Then keep coming back to the chair until you hit it.
This sounds fairly simple, and it actually is. You can use this method to increase your production no matter what you write or how often you currently release new work.
But I also recommend increasing production in slow, steady increments. You don't want to reach too high too quickly and set yourself up for failure.
Note that all of this also goes to busting the silly myth that you can't turn out quality fiction unless you write "slowly," by which the pundits mean outline, revise, etc.
To use Diane's example from above, I also advised that she might want to first decrease her time for each novel from 30 to 21 days. Then, once she attains and is comfortable with that level, decrease it again to every 15 days.
I think the biggest key to this is to truly enjoy the writing itself. If you can hardly wait to get back to writing fiction when you have to be away, you're a shoo-in to increase your productivity.
In my own writing, I'm currently putting out a new novel every two weeks. As I continue, I'll be aiming at putting one out every 10 days.
To my own way of thinking, doing that regularly would be good enough. But in my own writing practice, later I might try to cut that down to a new novel every week.
I hasten to add, that wouldn't mean publishing 52 new novels every year.
At that level of productivity (or maybe even when I'm turning out a new novel every 10 days), I might set up a routine of taking off a day or two (but no more than two days) between novels just to do nothing for a little while.
It should go without saying, but it's also important to note that all of this will happen without sacrificing quality.
However, just as I'll never go back to doubting myself and sacrifice quantity for the false quality assured by following the myths, I'll still do all the next-level things I'm doing now and teaching through TNDJ.
Eventually, I'm sure, I'll reach a personal balance between quality and quantity. And so can you. Just remember that Authenticity Equals Quality. When you start wanting to control the characters and the story, that's when quality will wane. Every time.
Chances are excellent that my typing speed won't increase either. I'll just spend a little more time each day in the chair and writing fiction.
The Novel Will Wrap Today
After the story took a major twist yesterday, I thought the current novel was going to wrap then, but I started writing late, after a particularly rough morning attempting to recover a complete chapter I thought I'd lost. So the novel didn't wrap.
I did recover the chapter, but I had to delve into my hard drive and drift down through several folders (at least users/me/roaming/Microsoft/Word and maybe a couple more) to find it. Whew! (If you eventually read BO-36, the almost-lost chapter was Chapter 22.)
In a related note, that chapter was all about a tertiary character. Often, tertiary characters' dialogue, personality, etc. is hyper interesting and fun to write. Why? Because they only pop into the story to lend a hand to the POV character and then they're gone.
Anyway, the novel will wrap and, if it wraps as soon as I think it might, I'll probably start another one. And I can tell you right now, it will probably be another Blackwell Ops novel and it will probably be a continuation of the Jack Temple subseries.
Speaking of which, tomorrow I'll be back with the Bradbury report for the week as well as a bit about so-called "comfort zones" in writing and whether I write in a comfort zone. Great fun.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
How to Plan a Marketable Fiction Book Series Not as myth-ridden as it sounds.
Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week: "Six More Tips on Effective Aging" Great fodder for characterizing your older characters.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 860
Writing of Blackwell Ops 36: Temple's Dream
Day 1…… 2476 words. To date…… 2476
Day 2…… 1484 words. To date…… 3960
Day 3…… 2837 words. To date…… 6797
Day 4…… 4223 words. To date…… 11020
Day 5…… 3366 words. To date…… 14386
Day 6…… 3123 words. To date…… 17509
Day 7…… 1289 words. To date…… 18798
Day 8…… 3609 words. To date…… 22407
Day 9…… 5245 words. To date…… 27652
Day 10…. 5216 words. To date…… 32868
Day 11…. 3572 words. To date…… 36440
Fiction for February………………… 3572
Fiction for 2025………………………. 124927
Nonfiction for February…………….... 1650
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 33630
2025 consumable words…………….. 152047
Average Fiction WPD (February)…….. 3572
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 2
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 106
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 274
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
Thanks for once again featuring my weekly newsletter, Harvey. If the "fodder" is helpful in any way to any of your subscribers, I would be most pleased. I can easily imagine some of them picking up on the "organ recital" theme.
Quality and quantity...
Many people judges whether a book is good or not before reading it. I don't like when people say something bad about anyone without knowing them. Like, when I said once Kató Lomb knew 25 languages, they told me "OK, but at what level..."
Knowing a language at any level is good. That comment meant nothing.
If someone says "I wrote a 100 novels", they would say, OK, but what level... Without reading it. They are not the ones we want to read our novels. Because there are many others who reads first, judge later. And interestingly they can enjoy themselves...
I've read recently an interview with a famous writer, and he said, sadly people don't read good books. What they read is bad. Well, it is an interesting take of believing he is better than anyone else. As if it would be a contest.
Writing isn't a contest.
I write more and more. I can't write every day, so I slowly increase my daily average word count, but it works. When I sit down to write I can do more. And that's so cool. (Although, it took time to get back trusting in myself and my characters).