slow and steady

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.