# Quality and Quantity



## Starry Eve (Mar 10, 2011)

There are successful writers who are fairly prolific (Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, etc) and those who have only written one great book in their lifetime (To Kill a Mockingbird's Harper Lee). What's usually the average amount of time it takes to write a quality book? I envy those authors who show a natural ability to churn out more than one good book a year, but I wouldn't mind either if I was only able to write one 'instant classic'...


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Starry Eve said:


> What's usually the average amount of time it takes to write a quality book?


A completely unanswerable question.

Mike


----------



## Pinworms (Oct 20, 2010)

The answer is 3 years 55 days 6 hours 12 minutes and 44 seconds


----------



## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Starry Eve said:


> What's usually the average amount of time it takes to write a quality book? I envy those authors who show a natural ability to churn out more than one good book a year, but I wouldn't mind either if I was only able to write one 'instant classic'...


I think it depends on the author. Some people can write awesome stuff in the space of a month or two, while others might take ten years to turn out a mediocre work.


----------



## intinst (Dec 23, 2008)

42


----------



## Daphne (May 27, 2010)

Tolkien took 13 years to complete *The Lord of the Rings*. Agatha Christie produced about 80 detective novels. Margaret Mitchell gave us quality and quantity in *Gone with the Wind* (and did anyone know she was going to call it *Pansy* - her original name for Scarlett?!) *The Great Gatsby* is short and *The Time Machine* a novella. Apparently there are no rules for how long or how many or how often when it comes to great books.


----------



## Marc Coburn (Mar 14, 2011)

I agree with all the others, Shakespeare more or less mass-produced plays, because he had to make a living from them and all of them are brilliant, Stephen King wrote his first successful novel while working 60h/week
I guess you can't answer that question, an author could have had the idea for a book ready in his head for decades and written it in 3 months or vice versa.
But I have to say I become suspicious when I see that an authors turns out 4 or more books a year, it is usually a sign of a quite unimiganinative work/ a standard story (which does not mean that it can't be an enjoyable rea...)


----------



## mscottwriter (Nov 5, 2010)

If only there was a way to figure this out, lol.

I heard once that there were two different kinds of writers: those who write a single, amazing book (Like Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird") and those who can write book after amazing book (Like Steinbeck, Gaiman, Atwood...)

I'd like to be in the second category, but I'd happily settle for writing just one amazing book!


----------



## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Well lets look at this a little objectively. If you have developed your talent for writing then it really is down to having fresh ideas and time to write. So a full time writer should be able to finish a book within months. But of course ideas and flushing them out require inspiration, which aren't always easy to have leap out at you from the page as you write. So the limiting factor is the ideas and how you want to communicate them.

The examples used are also misleading.
Steven King - yes is an amazing writer and churns out vast amounts of work. He also writes a lot of rubbish.
Tolkein - LOTR feels like a lot more than 13 years of writing, I started going gray with the it.
42 - apparently the idea for the Hitchhikers Guide was straight forward, the outline was done in a weekend, and yet Adams was quoted as saying 'I love the whooshing noise deadlines make as the fly by'.
Pratchett - is essentially expanding on an already built universe, thus making it easier.

My favourite example is Mark Twain. He wrote Tom Sawyer rather quickly, and it reads that way as well, yet Huckleberry Finn took him several years, and sections of it read like that as well. Clearly Huck Finn is a more complicated story and required more ideas and communication and it is easy to see why a writer could get bogged down in the writing or hit a wall.


----------



## Starry Eve (Mar 10, 2011)

One of the advantages of being an indie author would probably be not having to complete a story by a contractual deadline. I understand why publishers need to get finalized books from their writers in order to have something to sell as soon as possible, but is it really fair to the writer when there's a specific date hanging over their heads to hurry up and have it done? I would think the quality of the work would be compromised and yet, I'm sure there are also perfectionist authors out there who would never release their writings because they'd never feel it's good enough. I've always thought the greatest writers tend to take the longest time before turning out any of their works.


----------



## RobynB (Jan 4, 2011)

intinst said:


> 42


You beat me to it! 

This is an interesting question. I've encountered some self-described literati who sneer at authors (like Jodi Picoult and some of the others mentioned above) who churn out a book a year. More time doesn't always mean a better book, IMO. Like some of the others have said, I think it depends on the writer.

I mentioned this recently in another thread, but Annie Proulx once said that it takes her twice as long to finish a short story than it does to finish a novel. And wasn't Franzen farting around for a bunch of years on his follow-up novel to _The Corrections_, but it wasn't until David Foster Wallace's suicide that compelled him to write _Freedom_ (in, like, two years)?


----------



## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Dean Wesley Smith (author of about a hundred novels) has done an interesting blog post on this as part of his "Killing the Sacred Cows" series. It's really interesting. The comments are even more interesting. http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=310

(To answer your question, I can only speak for myself. When I put my mind to it, I can write a polished manuscript in about a month or three, depending upon genre, research requirements, and length. I've written short stories from blank page to submit in an afternoon and have sold them. My freelance articles are very fast and I generally only need one read-through to fix the typos).

Starry Eve - again, only can speak for myself, but I do my absolute best when there is a deadline hanging over my head for just about anything


----------



## Liv James (Feb 16, 2011)

It depends on how much time you can dedicate to writing, rewriting, editing and perfecting your work. I think it also depends on your audience. 

I envision my typical reader as a woman a lot like me who is crazy busy with work and family and every so often gets to sit down with her kindle and escape into someone else's life for a little while. She's not looking for a complicated intellectual read - she gets enough of that at the office. She's looking for the same feeling she gets after she watches Steel Magnolias or Julie and Julia.

Having said all that, it takes me about a year to go from concept to finished full-length novel. I do most of my writing at night and on airplanes. My most prolific months tend to be November - March.

Cheers!


----------



## Aaron Pogue (Feb 18, 2011)

tim290280 said:


> Pratchett - is essentially expanding on an already built universe, thus making it easier.


One of my first reactions when I started reading this thread was that I think a lot of Pratchett's books _are_ quality. They're not snooty about it, but (especially once he hit his stride) there is a rich amount of myth and meaning in his stories.

But Tim's exactly right. Pratchett can do that because he has established his setting and (for the most part) his cast of characters. At that point, writing a new novel is a matter of coming up with a story idea (which might be the easiest part of writing a novel).

I can do the same thing with mine. I'm working on a 25-book series, and it took me more than a year to get the first one right, but once that was established, I can do the sequels considerably faster. And that's not a matter of sacrificing quality for speed, it's a matter of having so many of the elements pre-assembled.


----------



## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

RobynB said:


> This is an interesting question. I've encountered some self-described literati who sneer at authors (like Jodi Picoult and some of the others mentioned above) who churn out a book a year. More time doesn't always mean a better book, IMO. Like some of the others have said, I think it depends on the writer.


I know everyone is different and quality has no relationship to writing time, but I can't help being dubious about a novel that took 5 to 15 years to write.


----------



## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

I think the question is why did Harper Lee never write another novel? Why did JD salinger stop so young? What happened to Truman Capoote? (OK OK, he felt so guilty about betraying Dick and Perry.) Margaret Mitchell was killed by a trolley at 38, but I think she would have written more.


----------



## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Writing isn't math, although publishers perhaps would like us to think that it's all about the bottom line.

Let's say our variable x equals an unknown quality, perhaps talent or perserverance.

3 years + 1 writer + x = 1 mediocre book

3 years + 1 big name + 2 ghost writers + 3x = 99 terrible books

3 years + 1 genius + x = 3 masterpieces

Now, if there's some magical equation to writing, you should be able to figure out from the above equations how much talent or perserverance a given writer possesses.  Good luck.


----------



## RobynB (Jan 4, 2011)

Joseph Robert Lewis said:


> I know everyone is different and quality has no relationship to writing time, but I can't help being dubious about a novel that took 5 to 15 years to write.


Yeah, especially the ones approaching 15 years.


----------



## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

I think a good novel written by a skilled author can be done in a year's time frame.


----------



## Daphne (May 27, 2010)

Jon Olson said:


> I think the question is why did Harper Lee never write another novel? Why did JD salinger stop so young? What happened to Truman Capoote? (OK OK, he felt so guilty about betraying Dick and Perry.) Margaret Mitchell was killed by a trolley at 38, but I think she would have written more.


As far as I know Harper Lee is 84 and still alive. Her first novel, published in 1960, won a Pulitzer prize in 1961. I saw a programme about her recently and it commented on the fact that initially she had responded to publicity, interviews etc., but soon decided that she wanted her privacy. There was also a suggestion that she felt that she might not match her initial success (she had a lot to live up to) and a second book was put aside unfinished.


----------



## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Jon Olson said:


> I think the question is why did Harper Lee never write another novel? Why did JD salinger stop so young? What happened to Truman Capoote? (OK OK, he felt so guilty about betraying Dick and Perry.) Margaret Mitchell was killed by a trolley at 38, but I think she would have written more.


Capote became an alcoholic, is what happened to him. He was the model for Dill in Mockingbird, by the way. I don't think Harper Lee has ever explained why she only published one book. But she could afford it, same as Salinger, thanks to Catcher in the Rye. Salinger kept on writing, just stopped publishing, I suspect. Why stop publishing? His PTSD probably had a lot to do with it. Mitchell was killed at 48, not 38, by a car, not a trolley, but why did she not publish in the last 13 years of her life? Well, she could afford not to too. Yet I think it's true that some people have only one story they really need to get out.


----------



## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Patrick Skelton said:


> I think a good novel written by a skilled author can be done in a year's time frame.


The more literary the novel the longer it takes, I'd say. Franzen took nine years between his last two books, as I recall. In the meantime Harlen Coben published every year.


----------



## Starry Eve (Mar 10, 2011)

How often is it though that an author wouldn't want to release their followup for fear it wouldn't match their initial success? There's always going to be some blow to the ego if it 'fails', but when expectations are higher, it's no longer as easy to please everyone. In general, I believe the quality of one's work reflects both the amount of time and effort put into it, and I can only wonder how much greater a naturally prolific and skilled writer's book could be if they actually slowed down. How many examples of classic literature are there anyway where the author only needed a few months or less to create their masterpieces? I honestly can't think of any... :/


----------



## Jamie Case (Feb 15, 2011)

I think authors vary wildly in how prolific they are because of the way they feel about their own work. Writing a 1000 words a day any author, _every_ author, should be able to generate at least 2 books a year (depending on the standardized length of their genre).

I think the reason this doesn't happen has to do with the author's own expectations. If a writer thinks what they've written is crap, they won't publish it even if you or I would have liked it. If they think it's amazing, then it's getting published even if most people think it's hackneyed prose. Throw some measure of success in there and the whole thing gets even more tortured.

Literary authors are more prone to this because literary success is so meager compared to mass market success. You might think Dan Brown sucks, but he's got millions of dollars that tell him otherwise. A literary darling still has to work and if she teaches (which a number of them do) she has to worry about her colleagues sneering behind her back if she gets ravaged by reviewers.

There is a cool clip on Hulu where Elizabeth Gilbert talks about her need to protect herself from fear as she writes a followup to Eat, Pray, Love. It's a couple of years old (she's already published the followup) but it's worth a watch.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/219255/tedtalks-elizabeth-gilbert-on-nurturing-creativity


----------



## Tom Schreck (Dec 12, 2010)

I think that question will have answers that run the gamut.

I think the answer will be different for a full time writer and for someone who works full time (and part time) outside of writing.

Having said that I expect of myself to write at least three pages a day. Which will give me a first draft in 100 days. Add in another 100-200 days for revisions and I think it is reasonable to expect  myself to write a 300 word book in 9 months.

Just me...


----------



## patrickt (Aug 28, 2010)

Some people have learned the craft of writing. They can write an entertaining novel. Then, they repeat. They already know the characters intimately. They get a new story--hey, the read the newspaper--and then they say, "How would my friends deal with this?"

I've enjoyed Tony Hillerman's books. His first, "A Fly on the Wall" was first published, I believe, after he was well know. It was rotten. Later, he tried to sneak off the reservation with "Finding Moon". It wasn't good or at least I didn't enjoy it.

With some writers, the characters have no depth, or maybe it's the author, and the books get so repetitive they're boring. There are series where I've thoroughly enjoyed the first few and then lost all interests.

I've never known an author who put out "great" books one after another. Herman Melville did one "Moby Dick". Mark Twain did better than most with "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn." Occasionally I've read what I considered to be a great book and then read other titles by the same author only to be sorely disappointed.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

E.M. Forster published his last novel, "A Passage to India," in 1924.  He died in 1971.  He wrote some short stories and lots of non-fiction (and he taught at Cambridge), but abandoned writing novels.  I think his flippant remark once was that he "forgot how to write novels."  Another time he said he got tired of trying to figure out people and relationships.


----------



## Julia444 (Feb 24, 2011)

I think it's a bit of both.  I've talked to writers with time-sensitive contracts who feel pressured to write books that are less than what they (the writers) want them to be.  Other people seem to really thrive and bloom under the deadline.

On a related note (but one that doesn't really apply) I once read that Dostoevsky had a very particular kind of epilepsy (which he shared with Van Gogh) which made him NEED to create large outputs of text every day.  Van Gogh did the same in long letters to his brother.  There was an obsessive quality about their writing, and yet in the case of both men, there was obviously brilliance there, as well.

The original question mentions Harper Lee; I also read that Ms. Lee has been writing for a long time, in the privacy of her own home, but no one knows what she is writing, and perhaps we will not know until she dies.  Perhaps journals, perhaps another novel.  But could it possibly exceed TKAM?

Margaret Mitchell is another writer who never bothered to (or needed to) write again after GONE WITH THE WIND.

An interesting question!

Julia


----------



## Starry Eve (Mar 10, 2011)

Rare is the author indeed with the ability to write more than 1 or 2 great literary books in their lifetime. It really is a lot of pressure to try and top yourself, and I don't know if it's harder with writing a sequel or an entirely original story?

Wasn't Emily Dickinson's poetry collection only discovered after her death? I'll have to research whether she even intended to publish them at all...


----------



## pixichick (Mar 1, 2011)

Every author is different, and sometimes I'm shocked when an author says they can write a book in just a few months, and I wonder how good it could be if that's the case - but one of my favorites, Robert B. Parker, could write two books a year, and they were consistently good.  They didn't have tons of detail, but they were still witty and fast paced, which I love.  Compare that to Thomas Harris Silence of the Lambs which he spent over seven years on - that seems like the other end of the spectrum (a very, very long time!) but every page of his novels are filled with the most wonderful details.  It makes me happy he took so much time - the end product is truly a work of art.


----------



## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

I wonder if a great literary author is somehow hampered by their success. As in, after they realize that their first novel is "great" in the minds of the world, that knowledge somehow erodes their confidence that they can duplicate or surpass their own success. They become so afraid of failing to live up to everyone's expectations that they give up. 

If that's the price of great success, sign me up for a lifetime of mediocre acclaim!


----------



## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Eric C said:


> *The more literary the novel the longer it takes, I'd say*. Franzen took nine years between his last two books, as I recall. In the meantime Harlen Coben published every year.


Why? I cannot think of any justification for this at all.


----------



## Marc Coburn (Mar 14, 2011)

tim290280 said:


> Why? I cannot think of any justification for this at all.


I agree. If one looks at what Ernest Hemingway or Henry James have published and how often, it is impossible to agree with this thesis.


----------



## Jamie Case (Feb 15, 2011)

Marc Coburn said:


> I agree. If one looks at what Ernest Hemingway or Henry James have published and how often, it is impossible to agree with this thesis.


Ernest Hemingway and Henry James were never on Oprah, never appeared on the cover of Time Magazine with the caption "Great American Novelist" and never had the POTUS photographed with a pre-publication copy of their novel all within the space of a free months. Pressure much?

Literary novelists today are faced with the expectation that their books be *important*. Important is not the same as meaningful, which used to be the standard before we lived in a 24-hour media circus. Important is very, very rare.

It's like asking genre writers to publish books that are wholly original. Good luck with that.


----------



## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Jamie Case said:


> Ernest Hemingway and Henry James were never on Oprah, never appeared on the cover of Time Magazine with the caption "Great American Novelist" and never had the POTUS photographed with a pre-publication copy of their novel all within the space of a free months. Pressure much?
> 
> Literary novelists today are faced with the expectation that their books be *important*. Important is not the same as meaningful, which used to be the standard before we lived in a 24-hour media circus. Important is very, very rare.
> 
> It's like asking genre writers to publish books that are wholly original. Good luck with that.


So you are saying that literary authors are having to actually put effort into writing, as opposed to anyone else who takes pride in their work?!?


----------



## Jamie Case (Feb 15, 2011)

tim290280 said:


> So you are saying that literary authors are having to actually put effort into writing, as opposed to anyone else who takes pride in their work?!?


Effort, pride, and important are not synonyms.


----------



## Moissanitejewel (Mar 17, 2011)

Completely depends. I have a friend who has written two novels, both being published, and two more on the way. It's been a year and a half. I self worked on one of mine while publishing with a company on my other and it's been two and a half years. It really depends on the author, natural talent, how much they edit, and also what they write. Romance novels seem to be churned out a little quicker than series. I guess since there's less world building that's needed? Or maybe I'm just naturally slower.


----------



## Marc Coburn (Mar 14, 2011)

It also simply depends on the amount of time an author can find for writing.  Some people can dedicate all their time to writing, others have to work 40h/week or raise three children or both or ...


----------



## brianrowe (Mar 10, 2011)

*I imagine if you're a really good creative writer you could write 2 good books in a year. 3 or more seems less likely, but not impossible. If someone's churning out 4-5 books a year, odds are they'll be mediocre at best. *


----------



## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

tim290280 said:


> Why? I cannot think of any justification for this at all.


I'm fairly sure that if you did a statistical analysis of literary versus genre fiction there would be a statistically significant difference found in how many books the former versus latter group produce per decade.

Consider John Banville as anecdotal evidence. He'll tell you he spends considerably more time writing his serious literature, his John Banville books, than his genre literature, his Benjamin Black books.

More anecdotal evidence: Arthur Golden took ten years to write Memoirs of a Geisha. But I can't think of a single genre author who devoted that amount of time to a genre book. Can you? (The closest I can come is T. Jefferson Parker who spent five years writing his first book. But that was a learning curve experience there, as he's come out with a book a year, roughly, ever since.)


----------



## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Jamie Case said:


> Effort, pride, and important are not synonyms.


I'm sorry, but "important" isn't something that can only be ascribed to a literary book any more than it can be ascribed to a well written genre book. Harry Potter wouldn't meet your conventions but it has had more impact upon society and gotten more people reading than any other books around, thus it is not only important but would carry more weight than just about any other book or series.



EricC said:


> I'm fairly sure that if you did a statistical analysis of literary versus genre fiction there would be a statistically significant difference found in how many books the former versus latter group produce per decade.
> 
> Consider John Banville as anecdotal evidence. He'll tell you he spends considerably more time writing his serious literature, his John Banville books, than his genre literature, his Benjamin Black books.
> 
> More anecdotal evidence: Arthur Golden took ten years to write Memoirs of a Geisha. But I can't think of a single genre author who devoted that amount of time to a genre book. Can you? (The closest I can come is T. Jefferson Parker who spent five years writing his first book. But that was a learning curve experience there, as he's come out with a book a year, roughly, ever since.)


I somehow doubt that. I think if you actually look at the co-variates - since we are talking statistics here - then they would be pretty even. You have extremes that can be cited but when you actually look at the amount of time spent on writing, the relative careers of the authors (a lot of literary authors tend to be preoccupied with other things), the opportunity to be a fulltime writer, etc, etc, then it suddenly becomes clear that there isn't any magical difference between styles or genres, merely between authors. Just like Jimmy Page recording Stairway to Heaven in one take (and a month to record the album) and Mozart took a month to write Symphony No.1, you get the opposite end of the spectrum where many composers take years to write a symphony and Guns 'N' Roses spent 15 years recording an album.


----------



## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Why assume Banville is an "extreme" case when he is simply one of a handful of authors who work in both lit fic and genre and the only one I know of who has gone on record as to how quickly he writes in one field versus another?

I'm not sure Geisha is an extreme case because there are lots of examples in lit fic--I've already mentioned Franzen taking nine years between efforts--of authors taking, say, more than five years to produce one novel, and few to no examples on the genre side. (With few exceptions, I think, a genre author who took ten years to produce his or her next book would be dropped by the publisher before completing the book.) At the other extreme I can name genre authors who put out two or more novels a year--Stephen King, in his prime, would crank out at least two door stoppers a year--and would be hard pressed to think of any lit fic authors who do the same.

I think you're right that lit fic authors spend more energy doing other things, e.g., non-fiction, short stories, than do genre authors, so that's a complicating factor here.


----------



## sardotirion (Mar 18, 2011)

With a lot of commercial authors, it seems like they can put out a book a month. I'm not mocking them, it just seems like they can pump out their material quickly. It's sort of a different story for those with longer books, or where there is an inordinate amount of depth in their books compared to your typical suspense novel. I think part of that could contribute to the overall times that very between authors. 

Also, the very nature of an author's personality, how much tedium they might add to their own work on account of perfectionism and the like, or how much they can just power through words, obviously adds or takes from the time it takes for them to write a completed work.


----------



## Ben White (Feb 11, 2011)

Joseph Robert Lewis said:


> I wonder if a great literary author is somehow hampered by their success. As in, after they realize that their first novel is "great" in the minds of the world, that knowledge somehow erodes their confidence that they can duplicate or surpass their own success. They become so afraid of failing to live up to everyone's expectations that they give up.
> 
> If that's the price of great success, sign me up for a lifetime of mediocre acclaim!


Hear, hear! I'm reminded of William Goldman, who could never bring himself to write a sequel to The Princess Bride because the original was just so universally adored.


----------



## dmburnett (Feb 4, 2011)

For me, it depends much more on the story.  For one of my novels, I finished the rough draft in a weekend, but there was another of my stories that took years to even get the rough draft down and another 6 months or so to get the final draft done.  Some stories just seem to come easy while others are difficult to get just right and take time.


----------



## Jamie Case (Feb 15, 2011)

tim290280 said:


> I'm sorry, but "important" isn't something that can only be ascribed to a literary book any more than it can be ascribed to a well written genre book.


I'm sorry...I said that where exactly?



> Harry Potter wouldn't meet your conventions but it has had more impact upon society and gotten more people reading than any other books around, thus it is not only important but would carry more weight than just about any other book or series.


You don't actually know my feelings about Harry Potter because I haven't shared them. I also poked around the thread a bit for the list of conventions that you seem so sure that I shared and those seem to be missing too.

Making your own assumptions, passing them off as my thoughts, and then arguing against them seems to be a rather convoluted way to have an honest discussion don't you think?


----------



## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Eric C said:


> Why assume Banville is an "extreme" case when he is simply one of a handful of authors who work in both lit fic and genre and the only one I know of who has gone on record as to how quickly he writes in one field versus another?
> 
> I'm not sure Geisha is an extreme case because there are lots of examples in lit fic--I've already mentioned Franzen taking nine years between efforts--of authors taking, say, more than five years to produce one novel, and few to no examples on the genre side. (With few exceptions, I think, a genre author who took ten years to produce his or her next book would be dropped by the publisher before completing the book.) At the other extreme I can name genre authors who put out two or more novels a year--Stephen King, in his prime, would crank out at least two door stoppers a year--and would be hard pressed to think of any lit fic authors who do the same.
> 
> I think you're right that lit fic authors spend more energy doing other things, e.g., non-fiction, short stories, than do genre authors, so that's a complicating factor here.


Exactly, which is why it is hard to discern how long it would take for any novel to take unless we compare apples with apples. I agree that the pressures to produce for genre authors is also another factor I hadn't considered. Although I have heard of genre authors that aren't particularly prolific, usually because they don't have the same pressures, so maybe that is the reason.

So I think we could both agree that it really is down to the individual author, regardless of style.


Jamie Case said:


> I'm sorry...I said that where exactly?
> 
> Harry Potter wouldn't meet your conventions but it has had more impact upon society and gotten more people reading than any other books around, thus it is not only important but would carry more weight than just about any other book or series.
> 
> ...


I think you have misunderstood my argument with having a level of hostility I hadn't intended, sorry about that.

Earlier in the thread you stated that there was the need for literary authors to have something "important" to say in response to a follow up regarding Eric's post about how literary author's take longer because it is more literary. I was using the examples of Harry Potter under this definition as an example. I don't see how we can draw a line and say that a good author's work is any less complicated to do than another good author's work, as it really is up to the individuals involved. Sorry again if I have misunderstood your posts, or for any confusion I've caused you.


----------



## Jamie Case (Feb 15, 2011)

I don't think you understand what I mean by important, so I'll explain with an example.

A couple years back Jonathan Safran Foer released Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Lots of readers loved it, it sold very well...I think there's even going to be a movie made. But it was eviscerated in reviews. It failed as a book about 9/11. Reviewers hated for being too cutesy, too post-modern, too superficial for such a weighty topic.

And that's what important means for literary authors...writing _the_ book about something. The one that's held up as the standard and added to the canon. Because literary authors believe in the canon. They believe that there are books and stories that everyone *should* read and their hope is to find a place in that there canon. So if you are a literary author, you don't write a book about coming of age in a small southern town and learning about race relations in the time of Jim Crow (To Kill a Mockingbird) or doing the same thing during the time of slavery (Huck Finn) or inappropriately and completely loving your mistress's underage daughter (Lolita) unless you've got something pretty important to say about it. It's been done, and much better than you could have done it. And that's where some of the paralysis starts to set in.

On other hand, I loved Harry Potter, even though the contours of the story were very familiar to me. What made it great was the interesting way J.K. updated some elements and subverted others. A few years later Rick Riordan wrote his own "magical boy who didn't know he was magical goes off to magical school with his magical friends where they battle magical adults and worry about a magical prophecy" and I loved Percy Jackson too. SMeyers reinvigorated the vampire sub-genre and now everyone from Richelle Mead to Amanda Hocking has their own variation on vampires.

If someone was to convince genre writers that they had to be wholly original in order to be truly successful, I think you'd see the output grind down, much as in literary fiction. But most genre writers reject the idea that each work has to be sui generis and just keep on trucking. It doesn't mean they aren't as good as literary writers, it just means they're different.


----------



## Rose Gordon (Mar 18, 2011)

I think it also depends on what you consider quality!

I know a few writers who whip out a book every few months. Some of them are better than others--both the work and the authors. I think it really depends on the writer's passion for their topic/storyline, time, ideas, creativity/use of words, and even a little bit of their own security. Some people can write a book but never feel comfortable letting others read it. They'll edit it and edit it and edit it or look over it "one more time before submission" and in the end, the book may never be read.

By the way, Harper Lee was asked to write another book and declined because she was afraid of it not being able to live up to the first one. And she had a reason to have that fear, it's difficult for any author to follow up a huge success with a larger one.


----------



## Daphne (May 27, 2010)

Starry Eve said:


> Wasn't Emily Dickinson's poetry collection only discovered after her death? I'll have to research whether she even intended to publish them at all...


I recall reading somewhere that whenever William Wordsworth threw away a poem he was dissatisfied with, his sister Dorothy - who was convinced of his genius and infallibility - pulled it out and kept it for posterity. The lesson here could be for all writers and artists to dispose of any works they are less than happy with thoroughly!


----------



## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

Ben White said:


> Hear, hear! I'm reminded of William Goldman, who could never bring himself to write a sequel to The Princess Bride because the original was just so universally adored.


I read he tried several times to write a sequel but eventually wrote himself off as a one-hit wonder. I can't believe that! I wonder what the mental block was between success and failure for him?


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Joseph Robert Lewis said:


> I read he tried several times to write a sequel but eventually wrote himself off as a one-hit wonder. I can't believe that! I wonder what the mental block was between success and failure for him?


It could be there was only one book in him. I don't have any problem believing that.

Mike


----------



## Gastro Detective (Feb 17, 2011)

This is why the Kindle is loved by so many writers - it sets them free of having to have a specific word count for their books. Traditional publishing requires a benchmark amount of words for each genre (ie: thriller - between 75,000 and 100,000). But imagine with this restriction removed, how much freer writers are to hone in on their story and not try and crow bar in a mandatory word count to satisfy a publisher's mandate.

Look, I'm already taking too many words to describe the fact that the Kindle has not only set the reader free, but also the writer.


----------



## Ben White (Feb 11, 2011)

jmiked said:


> It could be there was only one book in him. I don't have any problem believing that.
> 
> Mike


Anyone who's read Marathon Man, Boys And Girls Together, The Colour Of Light, Brothers etc. would disagree, I think  It's just The Princess Bride was such an amazing success and so beloved by so many people that I think he was scared of creating something lesser--that writing an inferior sequel would taint the original. In the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Princess Bride there's a cute story about how Stephen King (Goldman's BFF) was going to 'adapt' the sequel, but how Goldman was allowed to do the first chapter--and it's really good. I think if he had written it, it would be at the least worthy of existence, even if it wasn't as good as the original. So it's a shame he never did.


----------



## pdugan (Mar 18, 2011)

This phenomenon exists in music too. Mozart died in his thirties and produced many symphonies (I can't remeber the number but I think it's around 40). None of his manuscripts have any erasures or corrections.

Beethoven died in his early fifties but produced only nine completed symphonies. All of his mansucripts are filled with errors, erasures, and corrections. I believe he worked on the ninth symphony for a decade.

The interesting thing to me is the speed with which they produced music reflected the way they each functioned in the world as people. Mozart is known to have been socially at ease while Beethoven brooded and leaned toward introversion. I would wager that many of the prolific novelists out there lean toward extraversion while those slower writers lean toward introversion.

I know I am very introverted and while I can easily type 1000 words a day, I have to rewrite extensively. It just doesn't flow out easily.


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Ben White said:


> Anyone who's read Marathon Man, Boys And Girls Together, The Colour Of Light, Brothers etc. would disagree, I think  It's just The Princess Bride was such an amazing success and so beloved by so many people that I think he was scared of creating something lesser--that writing an inferior sequel would taint the original. In the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Princess Bride there's a cute story about how Stephen King (Goldman's BFF) was going to 'adapt' the sequel, but how Goldman was allowed to do the first chapter--and it's really good. I think if he had written it, it would be at the least worthy of existence, even if it wasn't as good as the original. So it's a shame he never did.


OK, let me re-phrase that: I have no problem believing that any given author may have only one book in him/her.

I don't know anything about Goldman, never having read any of his work. I have seen movies adapted from his work, though.

Mike


----------



## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

jmiked said:


> OK, let me re-phrase that: I have no problem believing that any given author may have only one book in him/her.
> 
> I don't know anything about Goldman, never having read any of his work. I have seen movies adapted from his work, though.
> 
> Mike


You should read The Princess Bride.


----------



## markbeyer (Jan 9, 2011)

Flaubert wrote slowly, wanting to perfect each paragraph before continuing. Scott Fitzgerald wrote quickly, and then rewrote many times to arrive at the final draft. Philip Roth says that he writes every day, and if you write every day, "then in about two years, you have a book." 

I write every day, and my new book is in its second draft. I shall probably have four drafts (the last being a very close copy edit, rather than movements or character revisions, etc). In all, about 2.5 years.


----------



## Jamie Case (Feb 15, 2011)

William Goldman is also one of the highest paid script doctors in Hollywood. Being paid around $60,000 a day to polish someone else's work might be a contributing factor to the fact that he feels no need to do more original work.


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

tim290280 said:


> You should read The Princess Bride.


Well, I probably should, and might do one day. I read mainly traditional mysteries and hard SF, anything else is down the list a bit, although there is no telling when I might wander off for a bit.

Mike


----------



## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

Hard to say. I have one that took only 5 years, while another that has taken 37 years.  

Edward C. Patterson


----------



## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

Edward C. Patterson said:


> Hard to say. I have one that took only 5 years, while another that has taken 37 years.
> 
> Edward C. Patterson


When you're working on a book over the course of multiple years, how often do you sit down to work on it? Every day, or whenever the impulse grabs you, or something else?


----------



## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

Generally worked in my head and then in several drafts. When it gets on the final production schedule it takes center stage and is worked every day until revised and published. That last phase varied by size.


----------

