Lancelot the Laptop Report: Still doing diagnostics. No longer thinking it’s the logic board. Prognosis shaky…
So, since I’m using Sailor Boy’s dinosaur, Red the Dell Laptop, and it doesn’t have a wireless card, I haven’t had online access at night. Boy, has that done wonders for my production. I’ve written 2,000 words on SSG2 since Sunday. (Current working title: Secret Society Girl Gets Laid. Not as snappy as Justine’s Magic! Magic! Magic! Oi! Oi! Oi!, but it will do. Plus, it makes MAE happy, which she deserves, as she’s apparently come down with an inconvenient case of the bubonic plague. Feel better, MAE!) I know 2,000 words is like, nothing, compared to the recent output of TJ, or even more, of Novelique, who has written a whole novel since last Wednesday. Of course, we’ve known for a while that Gena is not human. I really admire her ability to turn out quality work at that speed. She wrote Awaken Me Darkly in six weeks, and I think it’s great! Usually, quality suffers when I rush, and I end up rewriting everything.
My current production rate is pretty good for me. I’m more of a tortoise type. Slow and steady. I really, really want to have this book done by the time the first one comes out, but to do that (I figured it out yesterday), I have to write 660 words a day, EVERY day. Figuring in days that I won’t write, things that will have to be completely rewritten, etc., I think trying to up production on writing days to 1,000 words is a cool idea.
Aliens like Gena aside, I’ve heard now from a slew of editors and agents that one of the biggest problems they see in submissions are rush jobs. Writers aren’t taking the time to properly polish their manuscripts, or they are rushing to hit a trend. In genre fiction, it’s important to be able to turn out a steady project (usually, several books per year), but you shouldn’t be sacrificing quality for quantity, especially in the beginning of your career.
I used to hang out on a fiction writing board with a girl who bragged that she wrote 14 manuscripts in six months (it often takes me that long to read fourteen books!). But she rarely got past the query stage with any of them. I couldn’t help but think that her time would be better served by writing six or even three manuscripts in that time (heck, let’s go really wild: one), and focusing on each. She always argued tht “once you sell” editors wanted writers who could produce, who weren’t just a one-hit wonder. But as far as I could tell, she wasn’t hitting anything. It took me three years to write four books, and another six months to write my fifth, and no one ever said I was too slow.
This writer also said if she didn’t get them out as quickly as possible, she’d lose interest in the story. But again, that doesn’t bode well for her career. You don’t have the luxury of getting bored with your story — you’re going to be working on it for a year! After I turned in Secret Society Girl (after going over it again several times myself), I revised it twice, reviewed it for copyediting once, and proofread it twice. I’ve probably read this book thirty times. There is so much post-production work to be done on a novel, that you need to be able to go the distance with it. Even if that means it takes a while.
February 21st, 2006 at 11:14 am
I totally hear ya on the post-production work. I’m so sick of my book right now (coming out in April) that I’ve developed an allergic rash to it.
February 21st, 2006 at 12:21 pm
I write fast, as you know, once I get going…but 14 manuscripts in 6 months? I don’t believe that. She’s either insane or a liar.
Did she ever get bought?
February 21st, 2006 at 12:34 pm
I don’t believe it either. 14 manuscripts, coming at the short side of say, 75 thousand words, is over a million words!
Come on, even PBW doesn’t write that fast! She wrote 10/11 books last year, I think.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:16 pm
No one could ever accuse me of writing too fast. My goal is 5 *good* pages a day (I can easily write 20 pages of schlock in a day, but then it takes me days and days to fix it). However, I often don’t make those five pages. Sometimes it’s just two pages. But then I don’t do much revision once I’m finished, either. I revise as I go, which is why I’m so slow. At least that’s my excuse.
Cindy
February 21st, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Marley, not that I know of, but I stopped hanging out there.
Milady, I think the differnce is that PBW writes publishable novels. Who knows what this person wrote?
Cindy, it’s not an excuse. I try to do one or two pages a day, and I’m fine with that.
February 21st, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Good, maybe someday I’ll learn to be fine with it, too. I know it’s my process, but it makes me feel like a slackass.
I just need to be really immersed in the words and my characters to do my stories justice. I’m not very visual, maybe that’s why. I don’t experience that “movie in the mind” thingie I’ve heard so much about. So I “channel” my characters, kind of like acting, and it makes for slow writing. For ME, anyway.
Cindy
February 21st, 2006 at 4:49 pm
I’m a very visual person, but I’m with you, I do a lot of channelling of the characters. I commonly “act out” scenes, in front of the mirror, etc. when I am working. Dialogue often runs in my head — whole conversations flying by so fast I can’t write them down. I do see scenes in my head though, especially action scenes play like in a “movie” and I’m watching them.
I never really got how the “movie” thing accounts for fast writing, though Marley has tried to explain it to me several times. Even if something is happening in a movie, you have to translate that into words. You know the old saying about a picture and a thousand words? The movie in your head flashes a picture, and you have to get the words to describe it.
Of course, Marley also says she writes fast because she types fast! LOL!
I’ve accepted that my brain doesn’t work the way Marley’s and Gena’s do, but since it does, in fact, seem to work, I’m not going to spend time worrying about it.
February 21st, 2006 at 6:42 pm
My whole “seeing the movie” thing probably relates to my having a photographic memory. So, what happens for me is that I let a story “cook” in my head for a certain amount of time. I conjure up images of the charactes, the setting, what’s going on. I literally outline in my head like a movie…meaning I can see the story from start to finish, with the middle and other scenes (with full soundtrack and orchestration) in my head.
And then, when I’m ready to write, I hit the “play” button in my mind and start transcribing what I’m “seeing.” And that’s where my fast typing comes into play. Because I type about 100 words per minute, I’m able to really crank while transcribing what I “see” in my head.
For me, it’s all about the $hitty first draft, as Anne Lamott writes about in Bird by Bird The real writing, details, layering of emotions, that comes in the re-writes and revisions.
Will this work for everyone? Probably not…but as you guys said, it’s what works best for me.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. *EEEG*
= )
February 21st, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Cool post. Fingers crossed for your laptop!
I’m endlessly fascinated by how differently everyone writes. MHGibson’s description above blows my mind. I’m all, like, really? You do what now? Huh.
And fourteen ms in six months? I detect no hint of rewriting there! You just wouldn’t have time.
I’m all over the place. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. And never remotely any good until the ms. has been through many drafts. I’m never tried it, but I very much doubt I can write more than two decent books in a year. Possibly not even. Especially if I don’t stop reading blogs and commenting and not doing my rewrites.
Okay, back down the coal mine it is.
February 21st, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I’m so thrilled to see the word count of Cindy and Diana. That’s pretty much how fast I work. I have moments of higher speed, but I feel really good if I get a solid 1000 or even 1500 words when I write. And then, I may not write the next day. (I usually will edit, though.)
Since I was a screenwriter before (had an agent, things optioned, meetings out the wazoo that would break your heart for being the bridesmaid so often)… anyway, I learned a couple of description techniques to help the reader’s eye follow what you’re seeing / wanting them to see. I’ll try to post something up on the blog later tonight if that would help anyone.
February 21st, 2006 at 10:26 pm
My feeling is that writing, much like other activities, is better not rushed. I’ve got my fingers crossed for your laptop and hoping that mine doesn’t get any ideas.
February 21st, 2006 at 11:34 pm
(ahem. I’m doing my best not to giggle at Marley’s photographic memory. It’s a very SELECTIVE photographic memory, huh chica?)
Nah, I don’t think that’s it, either. It’s not about memory. It’s about transcribing. Words are not pictures. Seeing is not writing. Images and emotions simply don’t translate at that speed for me. Also, like CIndy, I do a lot of editing as I go, and fewer drafts. I think Marley’s shitty first draft idea is closer to it. It’s what Gena describes as well.
February 22nd, 2006 at 8:51 am
>>(ahem. I’m doing my best not to giggle at Marley’s photographic memory. It’s a very SELECTIVE photographic memory, huh chica?)< <
LOL…oh, the photographic part is fine (meaning seeing something, reading something and remembering it)…it’s all the other types of memories that are falling to $hit! *EG*
My mother is actually the same way with music. She hears the orchestration in her head, knows all of the parts…can *see* the music, and when she sits down to write it, it just flows because she knows it so well. (She’s written several religious “operas” and had them performed.)
I guess that’s my point, is that if you know your story in such a vivid manner, it helps with the physical writing of it, at least for me.
Like everyone says…different things work for different people. That’s why you have to find what works for you and go for it.
= )
February 22nd, 2006 at 9:00 am
i guess there are some people who want to write so badly and belong to the writerly community that they’ll try anything to fit in. they want to emulate those who are successful and if author x writes an outline, then, by god, i’ll write one until i find out author z does it by the seat of her pants and hits the new yrok times list and then i want to spend three months researching her and how she does it instead of writing. i know too many people in my rwa chapter who are like that. they so much want to have the backend success but are afraid of just stopping the research and the questioning and interviewing other authors and just be quiet and write the damn book even if it is, as you people are say, is shitty. i think that’s what frustrates me so much about conversations like this is everyone tries to prove or show that their method is right or best and others try to emulate it. it’s not those people who are writing with the working methods that i’m worried about rather the people who are desperately trying to write, who have no story, but are thinking there’s this easy button they hit (like the office max commercials) where they’ll be granted this wisdom of how a story fleshes out and how they’ll be able to sell a million books. this is something i wish i could convey to my friends every time they ask me how i do it? (i have five completed manuscripts.) i keep telling them to shut up and write. how hard is that?
February 22nd, 2006 at 9:49 am
Ahem, let’s try it again, where my mind doesn’t substitute homophones at every opportunity (I do that all the time… I write by ear, I guess!).
As I was saying, I think you’re exactly right, metrogirl. Writers write. Everything else is like golfers with slightly different grips. As long as the ball gets in the hole, the rest doesn’t really matter.