2012 in review: writing
We talked about ebook sales in 2012 already, but let’s talk about the actual writing I did for the year. Glen Cook famously said the key to writing was to sit your butt down in the chair and do it, and I have found this to be excellent advice. No Internet, no email, no (God forbid) Facebook, just sit down and do it.
But first, a brief digression on a this same topic.
The thing is, to be a writer, you have to like to write. Since I started self-publishing, I’ve encountered quite a few people who want to be an Author! who has written a Real! Book!, but don’t particularly like the act of writing itself. So they’ll write two, maybe three books, and then spend all their time yammering on Twitter and Facebook, and then get disgruntled when no one buys their books.
If you enjoy having written more than actually writing, you won’t be happy as a writer. It’s no different than reading. Some people view reading as nothing more than a tool – they’ll read things when they need to do so (like plane schedules or work emails), but the idea of reading for pleasure would no more occur to them than I would think about doing plumbing repair for pleasure. And there’s nothing wrong with that – if you don’t enjoy writing, you don’t enjoy writing, and there’s no reason to beat yourself up for that.
Fortunately, I enjoy writing. So what did I write this year?
I wrote three new novels in their entirety: GHOST IN THE STORM, SOUL OF SORCERY, and GHOST IN THE STONE. I also edited SOUL OF DRAGONS, and wrote the rough draft of SOUL OF SKULLS.
I wrote three new novellas: GHOST DAGGER, THE DRAGON’S SHADOW, and THE BURNING CHILD.
Finally, I wrote four new nonfiction books: THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE, THE UBUNTU DESKTOP BEGINNER’S GUIDE, THE WINDOWS 8 BEGINNER’S GUIDE, and THE LINUX MINT BEGINNER’S GUIDE.
So, all told, I wrote about 530,000 words of new fiction in 2012, which is an average of about 1,450 words a day.
The thing is, though, I didn’t write every single day. On quite a few days I just edited and proofread and didn’t write anything new. I suppose it’s like exercise. After you do weights, you should switch to cardio the next day. But on the days I did write new material, I wrote as fast as I could manage, and only rarely did less than 3,000 words a day.
I’ve read arguments that writing fast means bad work, but I disagree. When I was in college (lo these many years ago), I listened to this sculptor talk about working with cast bronze. The trick, she said, is to pour the molten bronze into the mold as quickly as possible, because it cools very quickly, and if you’re too slow, it cools into a funny shape. I think that applies to rough drafts as well. Once I’ve outlined in advance (necessary if you’re going to write fast), the longer I delay, the worse the final product will be.
So that is everything I wrote in 2012. Hopefully I can be as productive in 2013, if not more so.
-JM