Wednesday 21 March 2012

Wordy Rappinghood

How much is a decent day's work for the jobbing writer? I've often been asked about my own working habits, and I've tried as far as possible to answer honestly. I aim to produce 3000 words each working day, which for me is essentially the normal working week; I'll generally do a bit of work on weekends, but that's more about catching up and maintaining momentum, than hitting a set target.

But that aim of 3000 words is exactly that: an aim. It's something I'll do my best to achieve, and on a good day, or near a deadline, I'll shoot well past it. But I won't kill myself if I don't hit it; what counts is that week in, week out, there's a sense of productivity. 3000 words is a short chapter, or about half of a normal one (by my standards). It's half to a third of a short story. It's a fiftieth of a long novel. The main thing is that if I can hit somewhere between 10 and 15,000 words of fiction a week, I know that the work is going well and that I will eventually produce enough raw wordage to begin to shape a submission-quality draft. The secret to finishing a novel is not writing tens of thousands of words in a single caffeine-fuelled writing binge, but steady work over many months. Most of us will know what it's like to work ridiculously hard to meet a deadline, but by the same token we will also know the draining muscular and mental fatigue that follows. We all have to do it sometimes (I've done 10,000 words in one day) but that's no way to sustain a writing career that one hopes will span decades, rather than years.

However - here's the key thing: I didn't always write 3000 words a day and I'd hate anyone to think that this was some absolute gold standard that must be met. Far from it: I know writers who produce much less than this, and who do perfectly well. I also know at least one writer who cranks out 5000 words a day, again to no obvious detriment to either career or health. Ultimately, the individual must find the working habits that best suit their lifestyle and temperament. Do you produce 500 meticulously polished words of near-publishable prose, or 3000 words of rougher material that nonetheless moves the story along and can be edited and shaped further down the line?

When I had a day job, and a lengthy commute to and from work, I found it just about manageable to produce 2000 words of fiction an evening. But this wasn't always easy, and I could only do it because my wife was there to keep me suitably fed and watered. And that 2000 words was only achieved when I'd already had a good number of years of serious work behind me. I certainly couldn't hit anything like that wordage when I was beginning to find my way into writing.

Writing is an art, but as with any art there are elements of craft which can only be learned with time. The novice writer struggles with the basic units of prose: it's tricky to put together a decent sentence, let alone more than one. The rhythm's off. One sentence doesn't lead fluidly into the next. That paragraph break feels like it's in the wrong place, but you can't quite put your finger on where it ought to be. But if you work at it hard enough, and over a long enough period, you'll eventually get to the point where you'll have internalised the basics well enough to be able to write almost effortlessly on the level of sentence and paragraph. (That's not to say that it's all suddenly become easy, it's just that you've raised your game enough to be worrying about a whole truckload of other things). During this phase you're a bit like a learner driver, still trying to get to grips with the rudiments of clutch, throttle and brakes. And just as you wouldn't set out to drive 5000 miles before you'd got to grips with the basics of gear shifting, so I don't think it's realistic to set yourself difficult word targets before you've reached some basic level of fluency with the elements of prose. Put another way, by all means try and write 2000 or 3000 words if you think you can attain that, but don't feel too bad if you can't. Like most things, it will come with time.

Speaking for myself, I did 2000 words today. But I also did a lengthy telephone interview, and tomorrow I have a function to prepare for. The key thing is flexibility. Find a personal work target, set it, and aim for it as best you can. Be strict, but at the same time cut yourself some slack when the goal is clearly unattainable. We all have off days. If you exhaust yourself trying to meet today's target, you're probably not going to have too easy a time of it meeting tomorrow's...

16 comments:

  1. Do you prepare a 'route map' of the story before writing or does the story evolve as you work your way through it?

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  2. I'm still struggling with that one, Bob. I generally have an idea of where I'm heading (especially with short fiction) but I've yet to make detailed planning work for me.

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  3. Speaking of beginnings... I always wondered what was your first draft of your first novel like?

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  4. I'm ok on short fiction but on a novel length story I sometimes lose my way, i.e. remembering where people are at certain times etc, especially as I am a slow writer and tend to have to leave the larger stories for a while to stew. I suppose one idea would be post-it notes or a whiteboard but I've never tried that.
    How about you?
    Do you tend to stick to one work at a time or do you have a couple of books on the go at once? (apart from shorts etc)

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  5. Wolfen: depends on which book I consider my first novel. I still have the handwritten manuscript of my first novel, but I didn't write it in drafts; I just kept fiddling with it until I was happy (or ready to bin it and move on). The second one was also handwritten, only that was a straight draft with little or no revision.

    Revelation Space was typewritten, and I tried not to do to much self-editing and revision as I was working through it. Just wind a sheet in, type to the bottom of the page, add it to the stack and move on. The finished book was quite rough and had internal inconsistencies, but I then typed it onto a Mac and from that point on the drafts became much less well defined.

    Bob: I use a whiteboard for exactly that reason. It's also useful for scribbling down timelines and wacky ideas that I can't use for a few months but don't want to forget. Doubtless there is software (like Scrivener) that can duplicate many of these functions.

    I'd rather work on one thing at a time but circumstances don't always allow that. I've been working on the follow-up to BRE since October, but in that time I've broken away from it to work on a couple of stories.

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  6. I love hearing about the process... oh, and your TEDx talk was quite awe inspiring.

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  7. It's interesting that you mention Scrivener, do you use something like it to write your drafts? Or is it just a simple text editor? Or do you prefer the mechanical way, hand or typewriter, so you don't get distracted by the wonders of modern computing?

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  8. I've not tried Scrivener - I was just hoping to hold off at the pass anyone who was about to say "you can do that in Scrivener!" I actually use a very old version of Word, simply because it does what I need it to do. I try not to get too precious about these things, though. The last thing I wrote longhand was "Merlin's Gun" but if I was stuck anywhere for more than a week or so without a computer, I'd happily break out the pen and paper again.

    Rusty: thanks!

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  9. I think 3000 is a very respectable tempo. For me, keeping a consistent number would be hard because I'd be excited to write about certain things in the story more than others, which would also bring up the need for self control and care to pace properly. Of course, I've read all your novels and most of your short stories and I've never seen you have any issues with pacing.

    By the way, I just tried the audiobook of "The Prefect" after having read the hardback a couple years ago, and I was very impressed by how great a narrator John Lee is; I didn't think I could enjoy that novel any more than I already had. Did you have a hand in selecting him or is that up to your publisher?

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  10. Thanks for the glimpse into your process. How do you account for/make time for revision? Do you still aim for 3K fresh words even while editing?

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  11. I've always found the pen to be mightier than the (s)word processor. Yet I do all my fixing's and re-draft's on the keyboard. I've found myself sometimes switching between the dining room table to the computer so often that it feels like a game of musical chair's, but it works for me.
    Like yourself, I use the simplest tools that get the job done.

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  12. Hi MH - editing for me is a different phase of work, which I only approach when I have a workable draft. Obviously at that point it's generally about removing, not adding words, and I don't set myself specific daily targets. That's the part I like best of all, as it happens.

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  13. Have you been on TED, yet? Surely, they (and we) would be honoured to hear you sum it ALL up in 18 minutes. You're da best sf there is, and yet you seem so normal. Ted-ster!

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  14. I did a TEDx talk last year - should be able to find it on Youtube if you poke around. Didn't set the world on fire...

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  15. You mention 'raw wordage' and so on, but what do you mean by that? Is it a wall of text that then needs to be laid out and spell checked properly? I find that if I try and write something, I have the habit of spell-checking and spacing/laying out as I go which obviously takes time to do

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  16. Hi Graeme - speaking for myself, I don't worry about spell-checking, layout and so on until much, much further down the writing timeline. There's no point fine-tuning a chunk of text which may not survive into the final draft.

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