The Journal: How to Write Faster

In today’s Journal

* “Of Interest” Is No More
* How to Write Faster
* Size Really Doesn’t Matter
* The Numbers

“Of Interest” Is No More

After years of including an “Of Interest” section in the Journal I’ve discontinued it. I’ve realized there are no longer any writers out there who are both actively teaching and who can teach you more than I can about the craft of writing.

Most of those who do purport to teach simply regurgitate the same old myths you’ve been hearing during most of your life. You can easily find them all over the Internet and in literally hundreds of “how-to” books. Oddly, those myths are always presented as if they were the original thoughts of whatever nonfiction book or blog post you’re reading at the moment.

I will never do that to you. As I have always done, I will continue to tell you the truth about writing.

How to Write Faster

Over at The Passive Voice this morning I read an article titled “How to Write Faster”. I included the link so you can read it if you want. If you do, be forewarned, it’s all PBS (pure bull, um, cookies). They even recommend you “type faster.” Wow, huh? What brain trust came up with that?

Listen, there are no easy shortcuts. If you want to write “faster,” take responsibility for that and spend more time in the chair.

Typing at even an average of 1000 words per hour (a blazing fast 17 words per minute) and spending only one hour per day in the chair actually writing, you can turn out a 90,000 word novel in 3 months and be thought prolific. After all, that’s four long novels per year. Working only one hour per day.

Or if you have an actual work ethic and spend even 4 hours in the chair writing each day, you’ll finish the same 90,000 word novel in 23 days and actually BE prolific. That’s almost 16 long novels per year.

And should you happen to actually put in a regulation 8 hour work day… well, you get the idea.

Size Doesn’t Really Matter

You can also let go of the inane 90,000 to 120,000 word novel length, which was strictly an invention of traditional publishing.

Here are the lengths to which I ascribe:

A short story is 2000 to 7999 words. A novelette is from 8000 to 14,999 words. A novella is from 15,000 to 24,999 words. A short novel is anything from 25,000 to 44,999 words. A novel is 45,000 to 79,999 words, and a long novel is any length from 80,000 words on up.

Why do I chop them up that way?

Because a short story is about One Event. It should wrap in about 8000 words or fewer. A novelette usually is still about one main event, maybe sliding into two. A novella, like a novel, is about a (short) series of interconnected events that lead to an overall resolution. It generally has far fewer main and supporting characters than a novel has.

Now to the novel—A novel of any length can have any number of main and supporting characters and will have a longer series of interconnected events. The longer that series of interconnected events, the longer the novel.

The benefit to writing shorter novels? It goes to discoverability. If you write a 90,000 word novel, you have your name on one cover. If you write two 45,000 word novels or three 30,000 word novels, you have your name on that many more covers. You are that much more discoverable.

That being said, I always recommend that you allow a story to be whatever length it wants to be. My own novels have ranged overll from 25,000 words to 110,000 words.

Finally, for funsies, I suggest you check out “The great [PAPER] book shortage of 2021”. Really, I’m suggesting this one only so I can add that none of this applies to ebooks. Just sayin’.

Okay, that’s all for today. Talk with you again later.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 640 words

Writing of WCGN 5: Tentative Title (novel)

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for October……… XXXX
Total fiction words for the year………… 623282
Total nonfiction words for October… 2740
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 168700
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 791982

Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 13
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 66
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.