Yes, I agree that every writer is different. As far as being able to put out more than one quality book in a year, I would immediate assume (perhaps wrongly) you mean something like YA, which runs 50-60k typically, still coming out to a very reasonable 100-120k professional quality words in a year, give or take a couple of months. I would even believe a really good (fast) writer could do 200,000 words a year (research, writing, editing), but I tend to believe that would be someone like yourself, whom you describe as writing every spare moment. I don't believe that even a really good writer could then throw in a couple of novellas and a dozen short stories, etc, and still do careful revisions.wildheart wrote:I get what you are saying. And I am sure that is true for quite a few writers out there. But most of the writers I read write more than one book a year and they just keep getting better and better. Just because someone writes fast doesn't mean their writing sucks. Kind of like just because it took someone five years to write a book doesn't mean its pure gold you know? It depends on the writer. Everyone is different.
Keep in mind, however, that genre matters. The rules are different for each genre, and the rules of some require more thought to implement and more revisions. Of course, a lot of that depends on which rules are easy for you and which ones you don't find natural and have to really work to implement.
However, my post was also about industry expectations of writers. The one-book-a-year was a discussion I have had with agents. Once you have an agent (if you don't already), this is a topic you can put to him or her about your own genre, sub-genre, etc and see what is right for your career. Career guidance is a big part of what they are there for.
It didn't sound rude or harsh, nor did your first post sound like you didn't care about what you wrote. As you say, you also spend a considerable amount of time editing. That's a small, niggly semantic difference in the way we talk about this. When I say I believe a writer can't write three or four quality books a year (say, 300k or 400k words), I am not just talking about the draft but also about the research, the planning, the editing, and revisions requested by the editor. If you spend a month writing and 5 months editing, that's still about two books a year, though probably more like 2 books every 16 or 18 months if requested revisions drag out. The difference is just that you do the heavy lifting at the back end, and there's nothing wrong with that.wildheart wrote:If this sounds rude or harsh its not meant to be. I just don't want people thinking I don't care about what I write.
And of course there are exceptions. Anne Perry springs to mind. I typically don't count on being the exception, though.
