Competitive Productivity
October 18th, 2011Well over a year ago, before I was truly “all in†on making a return to a writing career, I was having a rare, face-to-face conversation with another writer who made a comment roughly on these lines: “So many younger writers these days seem to make a living by writing book after book after book, staying alive by constantly producing.†I think I groaned, said that I could never do that and wouldn’t want to; that writing was just too damned hard, and I needed at least a year to finish a book.
Yeah.
Times change and it’s good to be adaptable. My writing speed has picked up and I’ve produced a good amount of work this year, but nothing close to the output of some of the writers in my twitter stream. Mind-boggling daily words counts, revision, copyedits, conventions, blog postings, book promotions and contests, charitable efforts, social media . . . I stagger in fatigue just thinking about it.
It’s fairly clear that I’m a slacker. On the other hand, I’m also inspired. Let’s call the phenomenon “competitive productivity.†If so many other writers (even some with day jobs!) can spend so many hours every day on writing-related tasks and produce results then what’s my excuse?
No excuses.
Thanks for the inspiration, y’all.
Posted on: Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Categories: Writing.
Tags: writing inspiration, writing productivity
October 18th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Greetings Linda,
It’s frustrating to see some writers who can write and write, and they seem to sell everything they produce. Natural talent I guess.
I’ve seen something you referred to about the Twitter stream, but I’ve viewed it on FB from a very productive Canadian writer. It seems he just a writing machine. If he were to write a lot of nonfiction too, I would say he’s a modern Isaac Asimov. Well, more power to him because he’s a very talented author.
I’m glad you are writing more now. I can’t wait to read that recent short story that involves, if I remember right, Zeke Choy, from The Bohr Maker.
I hope you won’t use, “reading this comment,” as an excuse for not writing. 🙂
Cheers!
October 18th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Thanks Jeffrey. I’m really hoping to sell that story, but of course if I don’t, I’ll eventually publish it myself. (How I love these modern days.) And of course I use this blog to skip out on real writing. That’s what blogs are for! 😉
October 30th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Writers who have a super-speed conveyor belt for pumping out books very quickly might be fast, but I have concerns that this approach is geared towards maximizing earnings rather than quality. I’ve found VERY few authors that I like who churn out work like this. I know many of them are popular, but I, personally, have never come across any that I like to read, to be honest.
I ALWAYS prefer writers who take their time and produce quality work, rather than someone who churns out lower quality book after book. Almost all of my favourite authors take at least a year (or more) to write a novel. Some are much slower than that (and even I wish they’d speed up a bit!), but I don’t think that spending a year on a quality novel is unreasonable.
Writers who are slow because they tend to “slack” a lot could easily increase their writing frequency quite a bit without any loss in quality, merely by getting themselves into a more organized and dedicated routine. But authors at the faster end of the scale who just pump out book after book surely have to suffer to some degree, quality-wise.
Hey, I can certainly understand wanting to make a successful living at writing. Very few authors who produce books slowly can claim to have made lots of money. The faster and more you write, the more money you make. But I happen to believe strongly that there has to be, eventually, a trade-off in higher frequency vs higher quality. As frequency increases to a very high level, quality HAS to decrease.
I just can’t see how most writers can produce their very best work when rushing to get it out so fast and so often. To any of the rare and extremely talented authors who actually CAN produce their best work at great speed, I apologize if these comments might offend. But I think I’m right in the majority of cases.