"Where most authors sweat to produce 1,000 words a day without self-mutilation, McCall Smith has been known to bang out three times that in a single sitting. He's a living rebuke of the notion that novel-writing is the least bit arduous."
I think there's something pernicious about that, as it seems to suggest that there's something easier about doing a bit every day than getting chunks of 5,000 words every week or two, for example, which does not strike me as any less arduous a way of going about things, and one more compatible with having a day-job which surely only adds to the overall level of arduousness.
That phenomenon comes around in fanfic, too. I marvel at how gryffindor_phan can put out giant chapters of AoF at such regular intervals when lately mine are taking me five to seven months on average.
But my output on my original work has been pretty hefty as of late, too. I once did fifty pages in a single day. That was a long day, and I knew exactly what I was going to write. Granted, most of it is now GONE, having been a casualty of rewrites, but there you have it.
The thing about the writers referenced in that article is that writing is all they do. That's their job. I once wrote 800 pages in 4 months (crazy since I almost forgot what my family looked like), but I can't keep up that pace with a part-time job and a family to look after. The part-time writer and full-time one are two different creatures from where I'm sitting.
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Date: 2005-04-22 05:27 pm (UTC)I think there's something pernicious about that, as it seems to suggest that there's something easier about doing a bit every day than getting chunks of 5,000 words every week or two, for example, which does not strike me as any less arduous a way of going about things, and one more compatible with having a day-job which surely only adds to the overall level of arduousness.
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Date: 2005-04-22 05:42 pm (UTC)*stabs self*
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Date: 2005-04-22 05:43 pm (UTC)But my output on my original work has been pretty hefty as of late, too. I once did fifty pages in a single day. That was a long day, and I knew exactly what I was going to write. Granted, most of it is now GONE, having been a casualty of rewrites, but there you have it.
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Date: 2005-04-22 05:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-22 11:06 pm (UTC)