I recently watched an hour long seminar of Ray Bradbury giving advice to aspiring writers. He basically came out and said that all of his "great short stories" were written "in a few hours." I was just wondering: While this might ring true for him, does this necessarily ring true for everyone else? To put it bluntly, I'm not an 'explosive writer' like Mr. Bradbury. I typically find myself writing only a few hundred words at a time, looking back, and thinking... maybe revising a bit before continuing for a few hundred. I'm not the type to sit down and write a few thousand words in a given sitting without having to take a substantial break. What 'type' of writer are you?
I've found that my shorter pieces come out better if I just sit down and keep going until its done. It keeps me in that state of mind. My larger pieces tend to grow slowly.
The short answer is it depends. Some days i write a lot, a few pages at one go, and other days i struggle to write fifty words. Overall, i suppose I plod along rather slowly Whatever. Rome wasn't built in a a day, and if it was, it would probably suck.
This is just an estimate, but I take around 15-20 hours per short story. Bradbury (and some other writers) take only a few hours because they have been writing for so long and have the experience to know how to write a certain scene. New writers tend to revise over and over and/or dwell on a certain scene for a long time to make it as good as possible. All I know is that if I were to write a story in a few hours, it would be horrible and unpublishable.
I'm extremely interested in the seminar! I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 and loved it. Where was it? Did you have to pay? You've perked my interest. As far as writing goes everyone is different. Clearly he has had some practice and is able to whip stories off quickly. I think as your writing career changes you'll find your writing habits will change as well. I personally like absolute silence, dim lights, and lots of time. The speed at which I write changes depending on if I know where the story is going or simply making it up as I go along
I find it difficult to sustain interest in short stories for more than maybe 5-6 hours. I write the bulk of it in that first hour or two (assuming we're talking under 3k words), then rewrite once or twice until I'm happy with it, or ready to abandon it. There's only one short piece I've written that I've worked on for much more time than that, and I don't think the extra time really shows...so yeah, I guess I'm an "explosive" writer. I doubt any of the short stories are up for publication though, although I've never written a short story with the intention of publishing it so perhaps that's why I don't feel the need to pour as much work into it as, say, a novel or play.
i write 'fast' because i've been writing for well over a half century... and even when i started writing, back in high school, i could turn out a newspaper column, or a term paper in one quick sitting [usually, the night before it was due]...
I'm an extremely slow writer. Even at my best, I'll probably get about ninety words in an hour, which is a bit more than one of my average paragraph lengths. My current projects, which I have been working on for three and four years respectively, only have slightly over 20,000 and 30,000 words.
