Writing: 1,103 words
I took the bait and checked out Dean Wesley Smith's website.
I admit that I'm intrigued. I didn't go to Smith's site looking for anything in particular, but after an aimless perusal of his articles, I stumbled across a section titled simply "Speed." That grabbed my attention, and I suppose it was what I had secretly been looking for.
Smith is the man who claims that "professional writers can average about one thousand words an hour." Not in a day: in an hour. On his website, Smith breaks his own velocity down further, explaing that he writes 250 words in fifteen-minute sprees. That still makes my head spin. I just can't imagine being able to sit down and produce a thousand words in an hour.
But then I wonder: why not? Just two weeks ago, I was averaging 66 words a day, and a month ago I wasn't producing anything at all. As recently as July, I couldn't imagine being able to sit down and produce a thousand words in a day. And yet I've already proven to myself that I can make a decision and hold to it. I went from writing no words per day to writing a thousand words per day simply by making the choice to do so.
I have no intention of attempting this kind of literary endeavour while writing the Danger of Being Me. But once the first draft of this novel is finished, I very well may. What's the worst that could happen? I discover that my productivity ceiling is actually only 700 words per hour, and wind up producing 2,800 words per night instead of a thousand?
Smith also admits elsewhere on his website that "when [he] started to get serious about fiction writing, it took [him] hours and hours to do one 250 word page." That's obliquely encouraging, since it's fair to say that I only really got serious about fiction writing in the last two weeks, and I have succeeded in producing 1,000 words every day literally overnight.
The real speed that Smith seems to be writing about (and with), though, is not the rapid pace at which he puts words on the page in a single sitting, but the rapid pace at which he puts books on the shelf over time. The thousand words he can churn out in an hour are staggering to be sure, but his real productivity is a consequence of sustaining that pace for months and years. He doesn't just produce words faster: he produces books faster, because he writes for more hours.
He is also an ardent opponent of rewriting, and though my mind recoiled at the suggestion, Smith does make some cogent points. His argument is rooted in a creative philosophy of art, based on the notion that writing emerges from the creative side of the brain while the act of rewriting is an exercise of the critical side.
Of course, lateralization of brain function is a fuzzy science at best, and creation isn't a strictly creative endeavor anyway - not as long as we're trying to tell coherent stories with the scaffolding of language - but I can certainly concede his point about the need for authors to get out of their own ways while writing.
I did my best to get out of my own way last night, and in three hours I wrote 1,103 words in two more sections, bringing the total manuscript up to 82,797.
I admit that I'm intrigued. I didn't go to Smith's site looking for anything in particular, but after an aimless perusal of his articles, I stumbled across a section titled simply "Speed." That grabbed my attention, and I suppose it was what I had secretly been looking for.
Smith is the man who claims that "professional writers can average about one thousand words an hour." Not in a day: in an hour. On his website, Smith breaks his own velocity down further, explaing that he writes 250 words in fifteen-minute sprees. That still makes my head spin. I just can't imagine being able to sit down and produce a thousand words in an hour.
But then I wonder: why not? Just two weeks ago, I was averaging 66 words a day, and a month ago I wasn't producing anything at all. As recently as July, I couldn't imagine being able to sit down and produce a thousand words in a day. And yet I've already proven to myself that I can make a decision and hold to it. I went from writing no words per day to writing a thousand words per day simply by making the choice to do so.
I have no intention of attempting this kind of literary endeavour while writing the Danger of Being Me. But once the first draft of this novel is finished, I very well may. What's the worst that could happen? I discover that my productivity ceiling is actually only 700 words per hour, and wind up producing 2,800 words per night instead of a thousand?
Smith also admits elsewhere on his website that "when [he] started to get serious about fiction writing, it took [him] hours and hours to do one 250 word page." That's obliquely encouraging, since it's fair to say that I only really got serious about fiction writing in the last two weeks, and I have succeeded in producing 1,000 words every day literally overnight.
The real speed that Smith seems to be writing about (and with), though, is not the rapid pace at which he puts words on the page in a single sitting, but the rapid pace at which he puts books on the shelf over time. The thousand words he can churn out in an hour are staggering to be sure, but his real productivity is a consequence of sustaining that pace for months and years. He doesn't just produce words faster: he produces books faster, because he writes for more hours.
He is also an ardent opponent of rewriting, and though my mind recoiled at the suggestion, Smith does make some cogent points. His argument is rooted in a creative philosophy of art, based on the notion that writing emerges from the creative side of the brain while the act of rewriting is an exercise of the critical side.
Of course, lateralization of brain function is a fuzzy science at best, and creation isn't a strictly creative endeavor anyway - not as long as we're trying to tell coherent stories with the scaffolding of language - but I can certainly concede his point about the need for authors to get out of their own ways while writing.
I did my best to get out of my own way last night, and in three hours I wrote 1,103 words in two more sections, bringing the total manuscript up to 82,797.