Where in the hell did a year go?
Tonight, for the first time since Nov. 17, 2009, I made fresh progress on a new novel. Eight hundred and fifty-nine words’ worth, if you must know, and that’s a pretty good single-session output for me. I’d be lying if I said I had planned to let it sit so long, and I’d also be lying if I said I feel like I wasted the time in between. Twenty-ten was spent pushing hard on 600 Hours of Edward, rounding The Summer Son into shape (and finding a publisher for it), essays, short stories and the like. I did not want for work, though I probably could have gotten by on a little less rest.
Just the same, after writing and selling two novels in twenty months, to have let twelve more slip by me with no measurable progress on a third seems … unlikely. And yet, that’s just what happened. Now that the thing is moving again, I’ll hope to stay atop it until I see it through. As to its working title or storyline, I’d like to hold that close for a little while longer yet. Ideas are like newborn puppies; the fewer hands that touch them, the better.
Craig Lancaster | A Mind Adrift in the West 
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December 28, 2010 at 7:20 am
mmarkmiller
I’ve looking at the productivity of established writers I admire, people like Kingsolver, Vonnegut and Doig. They produce a new book about every three year. Your rate of two novels in 20 months is prodigious. Words per day may be a good means of self-discipline, but years per book is a better measure of productivity.
Indeed, ideas are like puppies. They turn out best when you care for them, train them and play with them lot. And you have to let them grow at their own rate.
December 28, 2010 at 10:12 am
craiglancaster
True enough, Mark. I read once where Doig said he writes 400 words a day, every day. Dick Wheeler, I’ve heard, has a similar discipline, although I think he puts down more words. What I envy, in both cases, is the every-single-day aspect. I get work done every day, but sometimes it’s recasting the website, or writing a guest blog post, or preparing packages for the mail. That’s the way it goes these days.
I’m not really obsessed with word counts, except to the degree that they define what a marketable novel is. But I do like taking the measure of a day’s work, if only for my own edification. Or, in the case of this post, as proof that I can still do it after so long away.
December 28, 2010 at 11:27 am
mmarkmiller
Sounds like you and I approach our work in similar ways. Like you, I lament days when I don’t add a few hundred words to my current book. But I recognize that other things — blog posts, book signings, research — are writers work too and try not to beat myself up.
And, I suspect that’s what Doig does too. He has published a dozen books since 1980 — a rate of one every two and a half years. If he had written 400 publishable words every day, he’d have more more than thirty 100,000-word books.
So far today, I’ve written 311 words for my next book. Better get back to work.
Here’s to a productive new year.