Faux Interview, Part 2

In Today’s Journal

* Some Fun
* Faux Interview, Part 2

Some Fun

I had a little fun revising my welcome page and bio yesterday on my author site. Check it out at HarveyStanbrough.com.

Faux Interview, Part 2

6. Your approach also creates an interesting relationship between speed and quality. Writing 120 novels in just over nine years is a level of output that most writers would find difficult to imagine.

Yeah, that whole speed vs. quality argument is also based in the myths, and the myths themselves are why some other writers find that level of output difficult to imagine. The whole “secret” is to write fiction every day. Where the words go (short story, novella, novel) doesn’t matter. That you write is what matters.

Writing 125 novels, 10 novellas, and let’s say 310 short stories (I think the total is actually closer to 330) in 9 years netted me 6,376,997 words.

But if you divide that by the number of days in 9 years (@365 days per year), you’ll get an average of only 1,941 words per day.

That’s an hour and a half to two hours per day, and that’s if you’re typing at a rate of about 1,000 words per hour.

Typing 1,000 words per hour is a blazing fast 17 words per minute. How fast did you type in typing class? I’ll bet 17 words per minute would have gotten you a failing grade.

7. Can writing faster actually make a writer better?

On writing “fast” Ray Bradbury famously said, “In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth dead falling or tiger-trapping.”

I say you have to define “fast.” I don’t believe typing 1000 words per hour is fast. As I wrote above, it’s only 17 words per minute.

Here’s an example:

Some consider me a “fast” writer because I can finish writing a 60,000 word novel in 60 hours. But so can almost anybody. Consider….

• If I compact that 60 hours into 15 days, I would have to have to spend about four hours per day writing to put 4,044 new words on the page per day. And sight unseen, critics would say the quality of the writing must have suffered.
• Yet if I spread that same 60 hours out over 6 months and only write five days per week (so 130 days), you would only have to write 455 words per day, which is about a half-hour’s work. But it took me 6 months, so the critics wouldn’t pre-judge. And if I’m turning out two novels per year, some would think me prolific.
• And if you double that and spread the 60 hours out over a whole calendar year but write only on weekdays (so 260 days) you could finish the novel by writing only 231 words per day (about a quarter-hour of writing). And of course since it took a whole year to finish, critics might laud it as a potential masterpiece.

So the whole idea that speed somehow equates with poor quality writing is ludicrous.

To answer your implied question, what makes a better writer is consistently putting new words on the page. We call that “practice.” In practicing, you learn.

Maybe interesting to note that of all the arts and crafts people in the world, only fiction writers actually prefer to hover in place over one work—going over it again and again and again—instead of merely putting it out there where it can find an audience and then starting a new project.

And they only do that because they’ve bought into the ridiculous myths that they must know where the story’s going in advance (so plan or outline), then revise, then seek critical input and/or edit, then rewrite ad nauseam, then polish.

And the irony is, every conscious-mind revision or rewrite takes the story farther from the characters’ original authentic story.

Successful writers—and by “successful” I mean those who write for the sake of telling a good story and entertaining themselves and others—eventually learn not to hover. They write, publish, then write something else.

In other words, they keep moving forward. They practice.

8. Many aspiring authors believe that slowing down automatically produces better prose. But perhaps slowing down can sometimes make a writer overthink. Second-guess. Self-edit. Lose the emotional momentum of a scene.

Yes to all of the above. Now ask yourself what makes sense about any of that?

9. How do you see the relationship between speed, instinct, and craft?

I don’t consider it. I just write what happens and how the characters react. I do that to the best of my current skill level. When the characters lead me through to the end of the story or novel, I publish it and begin a new story or novel.

10. What separates productive writing from simply producing a large quantity of words?

That’s an apples and oranges comparison. Any writing is productive writing because it’s either what you wanted to write or it’s taking you to what you wanted to write.

11. In June you wrote about the idea that “the first draft is the final draft,” while also discussing the discipline required to train yourself to write well the first time.

I suspect that’s a false or inaccurate quote. I very seldom even write the word “draft” as it pertains to how many drafts some writers allegedly write.

Anyway, no discipline is required other than simply trusting the folks who are living the story.

Here, let’s do a brief exercise:

Imagine you’ve set yourself the task of writing authentically about a week in the life of your neighbor.

These are the parameters:

1. During that week you don’t require sleep, though your neighbor can sleep or do whatever else anytime he likes.
2. During that week you have completely unfettered access to

• everything the neighbor does, says, and thinks;
• everything he sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches physically, and feels emotionally;
• and of course you can hear exactly what he and any other “characters” say during that week.

So to accomplish your task, all you have to do is follow him around and write

• every event that affects him;
• his descriptions, impressions, and opinions of every setting he goes into;
• his unspoken thoughts; and
• any dialogue between himself and anyone else he encounters during that week.

If you want the story to be authentic, you must write only those things.

You aren’t allowed to embellish any events; what he perceives or experiences with his physical or emotional senses; his descriptions, impressions, and opinions of any part of any setting; his unspoken thoughts; or any dialogue between him and any other characters.

Under the parameters I set above, could you do that? Of course you could. So if you can do that for your neighbor, why can’t you do the same for your characters?

If your response to that question is “Because they aren’t real,” there’s your problem. Because in the story world, the characters are real.