It comes and goes, mostly depending on where I'm at in the plot and whose narrating. (My current work is 1st person and changes narrators from chapter to chapter.) Action scenes breeze by quickly. Introducing new characters is slooooow; I don't want to screw up that first impression. My MC's narratives go smoothly, because his style is similar to my own, but some of the other characters are tougher to write as. I don't think like them, so I have to watch what I say and how I say it. As for editing, I edit as I go, cleaning up mispellings as soon as I see the red squiggle and seeing what's up when the green ones appear. i don't get them often, so it doesn't take me "out of the zone" to stop and fix that stuff. Usually when I reread, it's just to make some minor changes in word choice here and there, nothing major. But I digress. To answer the question, I probably average about 1,000-1,500 words an hour.
Good advice, but to make money as a novelist, don't you need to crank out 2-3 novels a month? Considering you are only going to get $1000-3000 per novel. I think if you could consistently get short stories in top paying magazines you could make a living do that as well. They pay what, around 400 per story?
Dude, even R.L. Stine doesn't crank out three novels a month. And if you're selling your novel for $1000 total, you need to have a serious talk with your agent. Like woah.
Haha. Well I am going by Dean Koontz book on how to write fiction written in the 70's, lol. He said he would get around $1,500 upfront, and then royalties, if and when ever they came in. But a more up to date book I read, said new authors, or even established authors only get a front of about $1500-4000. Do they pay significantly higher now? Oh also this author, I forgot her name, but she has been on the best sellers list, said it can take 10 years before you start to see royalties.
The royalties are a significant portion of the income, especially when the advance is so relatively small. Discount them at your peril. Also bear in mind that $1000 in the late 1970's is rather more money today.
Some people are just curious, and already do concentrate on quality. I'm not letting anyone else's writing speed influence how I write, but I have to admit I too was curious about other people's output. *shrug*
You know, some nights (and i mean some as in rare) nights i can write a complete chapter (mine are quiet lengthy on first draft) of about 15,000 to 20,000 in a night BUT most nights i were i can be motivated, having my pen and paper/word document open for 10 hours and write a single sentence.. With the single liners, they can be some of my best stuff (as it will lead on to the following night with wild typing), whereas the BIG nights lead to nowhere as polishing can take 20 times longer for me to complete, compared to just doing it So, rant mode here.
I keep a notebook of all ideas and I'm constantly rereading them over and over and I carry out a pseudo-meditation on how to connect them. So, it won't take me that long to write about 1000 words, but it takes a while to get to that point.
Agreed, although I can't read my own handwriting so that presents a problem I'll spend ages pulling the characters out of my head so I can see 'em clearly. I'm constantly turning them over and over - when I'm driving/eating/trying to sleep, even when I'm working. After that writing is a nice fluid process. The actualy word count-writing bit, completely depends on how coherant I am at the time. 4am, I struggle a little!
When I'm really motivated and the ideas are flowing, I can do 5,000+ words in a day (although I will often cut plenty of that before the end of the next day - I'm a perfectionist and if one sentence isn't perfect it goes - along with everything else after it). On the other hand, when I'm not particularly motivated and ideas aren't flowing, I can go weeks and months without writing a thing. When it comes to drafts, I wrote one 150,000 word draft about 3 years ago, and it took me little over six months to complete. On the other hand, I've been working on my current draft for 4 months and I've not yet hit 15,000 words (although I do have a habit of redrafting every passage several times, so this summer I've still probably written 100,000 words or so).
I am a very slow writer. I think that it's sort of hard for me if I don't have a large chunk of time to write. 500 words will take me in between 3 or 4 hours, at least that's how it's been lately. Right now I'm just trying to write anything I can think of because I haven't thought of a beginning yet! So not totally knowing what I'm writing really slows me down. I remember last summer knowing exactly what I was writing. Several times I would get 10 hand written pages in 4-5 hours. But I don't know what the word count is because I never typed that draft up.
And read. For me, it's hard because I have a lot of extracurriculars at my university. But for the past 6 months I've tried to write 2-3 hours per day. THis was over the summer and this past quarter, where I was abroad with my school, so I didn't have the extracurriculars. When writing new prose I've shot for 10 pages per day and now, working on revision for the last 3 months, I try to set a goal of a chapter revised per day or a certain number of pages. Also, over the summer I tried to read 100 pages of fiction per day. This fell over the past few months, but I still try. As school starts and I become involved again, I'm really worried about finding time to write. But hopefully it works out. So, what are other people's regimens? Do you have a set time everyday and a set place? Or is it a 'whenever I find time to thing' (I've found myself writing during class, on planes, on the beach, whenever I can). And what do busy people do to ensure they have time?
When I worked in an office, I would write during working hours. This isn't something I recommend because you can get in trouble for it. The most important factor, for me, wasn't so much the writing but more jotting ideas down. When I got home, I tried to write 1,500 words a day when I was really busy. I would power through, not stopping--typo galore. The point wasn't so much to create a brilliant piece of work, but rather to get what was in my head down on paper. Sometimes I would end up having to scrap almost the whole document, but sometimes I'd end up with something that I could build on. A bad analogy would be to say it's like having a packet of seeds. If you leave them in the packet then they won't do much good, but if you throw them into the soil then who knows. But that is a bad analogy. As far as reading goes, I try to read a bit a day. Just a few pages. Apologies to be crude, but eventually we all need to crap so... I'm sure some people turn their noses up at the idea of taking a book into the toilet but desperate times... Also commuting. If you have to use public transport, then read when on the bus. I don't work that busy a schedule anymore but that's generally what I did.
I try to write everyday. The best time for me seems to be in the morning, as soon as I get up, I sit at my computer and try to write. Some days it’s mostly gibberish thoughts and ideas but other times I’m inspired. My goal is always to write at least three pages, but hasn’t happened yet. Instead I write small paragraphs and save them, and then I go back and read them and edit them. I spend allot of time doing research for what ever it is that I’m writing, so I think the majority of my writing time is wasted looking up words, researching concepts, and reading up on what ever it is I intend to write. It has lots to do with the fact that English isn’t my first language.
I write at work too. Tut tut. I write most days. I write longhand so as to be able to take it with me wherever I go, but on the other hand you run the risk of losing the damn thing which I am very apt at; losing things that is. Lunch hours are good. I try to get at least twenty mins in then. The trouble I have and I don't know if anyone is the same but when I get home from work I am so tired and find it hard to produce quality work.
I write when I feel like writing. That usually works the best for me. I don't like forcing myself to write because then I end up with complete crap.
I MAKE the time to write. I write whenever I feel motivated to, or sometimes after I push myself to do it.
i write whenever/wherever i get something in my head that needs to be written... and for as long as it takes to get it onto paper... and with whatever i have at hand to write with... when working on major projects i've been known to work 18/20 hours a day for weeks on end, forgetting to eat, if no one throws some food at me... back when i had what passed for a 'normal' life, i wrote all the time i wasn't dealing with things like running a home that was also a rooming house, along with my writing consultant business and raising the last 2 of my 7 kids... now, i'm online from 6-ish am to 7-8 pm every single day, helping writers on sites like this and the many who come to me for one-on-one mentoring, as well as doing whatever writing is needed by the locals, which includes virtually all the letters, notices, reports, etc. for the local clinic admin and assorted other little stuff for island residents whose english is generally pretty mangled... when i have something of my own to write, i just sit down and do it, in between all the other stuff and running the free books and donation center i started that's in the other half of my duplex [donated by a generous local businessman]...
For now, my memory is excellent so I only write whenever I feel like writing, and keep all ideas in my mind. I don't try to make a schedule plan since it would never work out for me. Strangely, I always find time to write. I uh ... don't read so much.
I always have a notebook around for ideas, i always have it out and scribble away. I write anywhere and everywhere, i have most my work on my laptop, so am limited as to when i can get stuck back into the actual novel itself, but am constantly writing little snippets and going from there, just so its always fresh in my head
I need to make time to write, but I haven't been. And when I do, it doesn't go so well, mostly because I have absolutely no idea what I'm writing. I'm a slow writer and writing for short periods of time doesn't help much unless I only want three sentences.
For me, managing a time to write is 90% of the battle. Some weeks I have hours to dedicate, other weeks I can barely squeeze in a few minutes here and there. It reminds me of an old quote, "How will you ever have time, if you don't make time?"
I'm afraid that I am the jack of all trades master of none. I have a lot of creative outlets that I rotate between (writing, art, knitting/crocheting, jewelry making and all other manner of arts & craft projects), and one of them is my career (web and graphic design). When I was a kid - teenager I read a few books a week, but lately all of my reading is typically whatever necessary on the web -- news, articles, forums, etc. I tried checking out three books from the library a few months ago. I finished the first one in a matter of days, started the second one and ended up accruing about $10 in fees due to my negligence of not returning the books... oops. As for writing -- I write emails... I guess you could say I am an unmotivated hobbyist. I wish I could have time to write and read more... but it always seems like I have about a million things to do.
I try to write about 3000 words every 3 days. One day I might write 2000 and the next 1000 then take a day off. Writing this way I finished the first draft of Bending Nature in two months.
