on un-writing
January 6, 2018 2:08 PM Subscribe
There are other sorts of time, besides the writing time. "Sometimes, when people ask how long it takes to write a novel, I wonder what they really want to hear. How long does it take to get to the bottom of the ski run? How much of that seven years was spent actually writing the actual text that went into the actual finished novel?"
Reservoir 13 is a beautiful book. Frequently when reading I wondered about the time he must have spent talking to people or trying to soak up feeling and presence. The sense of place and of time passing within is remarkable.
posted by giraffeneckbattle at 2:57 PM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by giraffeneckbattle at 2:57 PM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
This odd blurted editorial in the middle was an odd contrast to the rest of the essay, but otherwise I enjoyed it.
"Fun fact: I have never been asked how I juggle writing and fatherhood. I’m not complaining; it’s nobody’s business, and nothing to do with writing. But I wonder what assumptions lie behind the question of juggling writing and motherhood coming up so regularly?"
posted by mumblelard at 2:59 PM on January 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
"Fun fact: I have never been asked how I juggle writing and fatherhood. I’m not complaining; it’s nobody’s business, and nothing to do with writing. But I wonder what assumptions lie behind the question of juggling writing and motherhood coming up so regularly?"
posted by mumblelard at 2:59 PM on January 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
Quite true in many disciplines, I think. I've certainly felt this way about songwriting, and from just as many angles. I try to watch the sun go down over the Pacific every evening because I get great melodic ideas from clearing my mind and listening to nothing but ocean for 90 minutes. I've had lyrical ideas that came after days hiking through the wilderness until I was talking to myself from isolation. Similarly, when trying to incorporate a particular factual or historic detail into a lyric - or to even discover what those might be - I'll read an entire book or conduct weeks of research just for the reward of a few lines. And then there are the "actual" hands-on-the-typewriter moments: hours of running my fingers over the frets in varying combinations, weighing the tempo and the cadence and sketching out the connective tissue. Most of those never even become songs; they just go into the melodic junk drawer until I feel like cleaning it out a few times a year. Anyway, I've had Reservoir 13 in my "to-read" pile for way too long now. Thanks for posting!
posted by mykescipark at 3:11 PM on January 6, 2018
posted by mykescipark at 3:11 PM on January 6, 2018
That "odd blurted editorial" is also the title of the essay
posted by chavenet at 3:12 PM on January 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 3:12 PM on January 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
Yeah, that odd blurt is actually really important and is part of the entire thrust of his argument, even though it is cast as an aside.
posted by sockermom at 4:42 PM on January 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by sockermom at 4:42 PM on January 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
Fuck me, seven years writing a single novel. I can't even.
(This is not to suggest there's something wrong with McGregor for taking seven years to write a novel. Writers have different speeds and different circumstances and different intents, and if it takes seven years, that's what it takes. But: Fuck me, seven years.)
As a contrast, I wrote one novel in five weeks and the one I just finished took 50 weeks. The amount of "ass in seat" time for both was about the same; I was just more disciplined when I wrote the five-week one.
posted by jscalzi at 5:26 PM on January 6, 2018 [13 favorites]
(This is not to suggest there's something wrong with McGregor for taking seven years to write a novel. Writers have different speeds and different circumstances and different intents, and if it takes seven years, that's what it takes. But: Fuck me, seven years.)
As a contrast, I wrote one novel in five weeks and the one I just finished took 50 weeks. The amount of "ass in seat" time for both was about the same; I was just more disciplined when I wrote the five-week one.
posted by jscalzi at 5:26 PM on January 6, 2018 [13 favorites]
I'm deep in "fuck me, six years" land, but I remind myself that I have had more than full-time day jobs, one of which requires intensive writing and research, and a massive health crisis, and a concussion, and an accident, and a devastating child thing, and a partner I'm supporting, and moving house, in the meantime. I'm almost done, and I am so ready.
posted by mynameisluka at 8:55 PM on January 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by mynameisluka at 8:55 PM on January 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
I used to be able to write a novel at NaNo-winning speed, but now I can't. Now it takes me about 18 months. I wrote 30,000 words in 2017, for example. I'm not any less disciplined. I'm writing very different things, though. In my experience, the more prosaically dense and personally revelatory, the more exhausting. I just can't pull 2k days with them.
(I did, however, ghostwrite a few work for hire romances in the middle of the last difficult, ambitious literary book that sold. They took 6 weeks a pop, and while they did slow down my own work, they were also sometimes a welcome distraction from it. It's comparatively light, fluffy, and easy to write about sexy alpha male marine biologists, I guess.)
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:43 PM on January 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
(I did, however, ghostwrite a few work for hire romances in the middle of the last difficult, ambitious literary book that sold. They took 6 weeks a pop, and while they did slow down my own work, they were also sometimes a welcome distraction from it. It's comparatively light, fluffy, and easy to write about sexy alpha male marine biologists, I guess.)
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:43 PM on January 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
Writing time minimax for me:
Slowest novel—Accelerando, took from very early 1999 to mid-2004. (The middle was so hard I wrote a 600 page doorstop, currently in print as The Bloodline Feud, as a distraction from grappling with the pivotal chapter/story. The first 155,000 word draft took just 10 weeks. I did not starve during the 4.5 year writing period for Accelerando because I wrote other novels concurrently.)
Fastest novel—The Annihilation Score, first draft (110,000 words) came out in 18 days flat. (On redraft, I hacksawed off the final 10,000 word chapter and re-wrote the ending out to just under 130,000 words, taking an entire month to get it right.)
Most recent novel—The Labyrinth Index, took about 12-14 weeks to draft 118,000 words. Currently awaiting editorial feedback. (It was an emergency fill-in because the novel I was trying to finish for this summer got stalled by my father's not-untimely-but-still-derailing death.)
My long-term sustained average seems to be 1.5 to 1.75 novels/year, where a novel is on the order of 110-130,000 words. Anything much less and you can't earn a living at it.
posted by cstross at 5:06 AM on January 7, 2018 [11 favorites]
Slowest novel—Accelerando, took from very early 1999 to mid-2004. (The middle was so hard I wrote a 600 page doorstop, currently in print as The Bloodline Feud, as a distraction from grappling with the pivotal chapter/story. The first 155,000 word draft took just 10 weeks. I did not starve during the 4.5 year writing period for Accelerando because I wrote other novels concurrently.)
Fastest novel—The Annihilation Score, first draft (110,000 words) came out in 18 days flat. (On redraft, I hacksawed off the final 10,000 word chapter and re-wrote the ending out to just under 130,000 words, taking an entire month to get it right.)
Most recent novel—The Labyrinth Index, took about 12-14 weeks to draft 118,000 words. Currently awaiting editorial feedback. (It was an emergency fill-in because the novel I was trying to finish for this summer got stalled by my father's not-untimely-but-still-derailing death.)
My long-term sustained average seems to be 1.5 to 1.75 novels/year, where a novel is on the order of 110-130,000 words. Anything much less and you can't earn a living at it.
posted by cstross at 5:06 AM on January 7, 2018 [11 favorites]
My long-term sustained average seems to be 1.5 to 1.75 novels/year, where a novel is on the order of 110-130,000 words. Anything much less and you can't earn a living at it.
I have come to really respect genre writers who I think of as "productive commercial writers," not in a disparaging way at all. My early writing days included being part of the lesbian and gay writing community, and also earning an MFA, which, combined, created a kind of mythos about writing that it was very, very important in a world-changing, social justice way, and also that it was worthwhile to spend a lot of time sitting around talking about your writing process and agonizing over what kind of pen you used and so on. For someone like me, an over-thinker from Day 1, this combined to create a really crushing sense of pressure around my writing, which really hampered me for a long time.
This milieu also tended to really disparage any kind of genre writing. Once, while at a four-week writing retreat where I was working really hard on Important Lesbian Writing, I woke up from a half-dream completely engrossed in this idea for a Star Trek novel. I couldn't move on from it, so I spent the day writing up a synopsis of it. In a letter to my partner, I described it as, "Better than a day at Disneyland." But I came from this background that really valued the "literary" and tended to disdain mere fun, so I sort of wrote this off as an aberration. As I've gotten older, I've also gotten over this mistaken idea about what is worthwhile to do as a writer, and, having recently written a romance novella (and a darn good one, if I do say so myself), I've developed a lot of respect for people who want to make a living at their writing and, as a result, sit down and write like it's their job. Because it is. And these people produce, on a fairly reliable basis, a lot of really good books which are pleasurable to read and also, often, do productive work in the area of commenting on social issues, portraying the lives of people who are outside the mainstream, and so on.
My sixteen-year-old recently decided to take his own writing more seriously, and he has been sitting down to write every day. He doesn't have a plan--he's not thinking that he's writing a novel or whatever. He's just writing every day because he figures if he writes every day, he's bound to get better at it. I like his approach and think it's a good one. It's more "do the work" than "think about doing the work." (So far, he's not sure how much his writing is improving, but he reports that his typing speed has increased dramatically.)
The middle was so hard I wrote a 600 page doorstop, currently in print as The Bloodline Feud, as a distraction from grappling with the pivotal chapter/story.
One of my favorite romance novels, Think of England by KJ Charles, was written as a distraction from a book she was stuck on. Here's to interstitial escape books!
Oh, here's an anecdote that I think captures some of what I was talking about:
When I was working on my MFA, a writer came to talk to the students. She wrote genre fiction--maybe mysteries? I can't remember off-hand. But she told us that, when she was choosing her nom de plume, she deliberately chose one that would lead to her books being shelved next to the books of one of the best-selling writers in her genre. We were, as a group, appalled by her crass commercialism. But at some point in the years sinse, I came to think that was kind of a smart move. If you're choosing to write under a pseudonym, why not? Might help, certainly won't hurt.
posted by Orlop at 6:07 AM on January 7, 2018 [6 favorites]
I have come to really respect genre writers who I think of as "productive commercial writers," not in a disparaging way at all. My early writing days included being part of the lesbian and gay writing community, and also earning an MFA, which, combined, created a kind of mythos about writing that it was very, very important in a world-changing, social justice way, and also that it was worthwhile to spend a lot of time sitting around talking about your writing process and agonizing over what kind of pen you used and so on. For someone like me, an over-thinker from Day 1, this combined to create a really crushing sense of pressure around my writing, which really hampered me for a long time.
This milieu also tended to really disparage any kind of genre writing. Once, while at a four-week writing retreat where I was working really hard on Important Lesbian Writing, I woke up from a half-dream completely engrossed in this idea for a Star Trek novel. I couldn't move on from it, so I spent the day writing up a synopsis of it. In a letter to my partner, I described it as, "Better than a day at Disneyland." But I came from this background that really valued the "literary" and tended to disdain mere fun, so I sort of wrote this off as an aberration. As I've gotten older, I've also gotten over this mistaken idea about what is worthwhile to do as a writer, and, having recently written a romance novella (and a darn good one, if I do say so myself), I've developed a lot of respect for people who want to make a living at their writing and, as a result, sit down and write like it's their job. Because it is. And these people produce, on a fairly reliable basis, a lot of really good books which are pleasurable to read and also, often, do productive work in the area of commenting on social issues, portraying the lives of people who are outside the mainstream, and so on.
My sixteen-year-old recently decided to take his own writing more seriously, and he has been sitting down to write every day. He doesn't have a plan--he's not thinking that he's writing a novel or whatever. He's just writing every day because he figures if he writes every day, he's bound to get better at it. I like his approach and think it's a good one. It's more "do the work" than "think about doing the work." (So far, he's not sure how much his writing is improving, but he reports that his typing speed has increased dramatically.)
The middle was so hard I wrote a 600 page doorstop, currently in print as The Bloodline Feud, as a distraction from grappling with the pivotal chapter/story.
One of my favorite romance novels, Think of England by KJ Charles, was written as a distraction from a book she was stuck on. Here's to interstitial escape books!
Oh, here's an anecdote that I think captures some of what I was talking about:
When I was working on my MFA, a writer came to talk to the students. She wrote genre fiction--maybe mysteries? I can't remember off-hand. But she told us that, when she was choosing her nom de plume, she deliberately chose one that would lead to her books being shelved next to the books of one of the best-selling writers in her genre. We were, as a group, appalled by her crass commercialism. But at some point in the years sinse, I came to think that was kind of a smart move. If you're choosing to write under a pseudonym, why not? Might help, certainly won't hurt.
posted by Orlop at 6:07 AM on January 7, 2018 [6 favorites]
Yeah, there's an interesting tension between the MFA world and the genre worlds in how they look at professionalism and pace. I've felt torn between them: I was sure I was a genre writer during my MFA, and was not always treated kindly because I used genre tropes, but then I went to Viable Paradise and was told I was a literary writer and I wish I had listened. Instead, I leaned into what I believed were necessary tools for being a successful commercial writer--monomythic plotting and daily writing calendars, using scrivener, outlining, that kind of thing--and flailed around a lot and wrote a lot of books quickly that didn't sell. So I've leaned away from that again. I suppose I'm trying to synthesize things: I want to be a successful professional writer who writes literary books which happen to use genre tropes. I fired two agents in that time span to get there, but this past year I sold two of these books for a whole lot more money (and it's a much better book) and suddenly a lot of things like "branding" have really clicked for me.
But writing those romance books for hire was a big help in this, I suppose, because I got to see how the extreme other side did it. I did it, and I understand now better how it works and why. I've thought about self pubbing a bunch of romance novels, because there's money in there, but I also know how much it would take away from the books that matter for me, so I don't. I have friends who have made that choice who no longer have time to do work as "them," and it seems painful for them.
One of the things I've struggled with, though, in synthesizing all these things, is the belief in the commercial world that those literary guys are such navel gazers, prone to excess just because--that literary isn't doing its own genre things and that maybe the work pace and professional aspects of their corner of the literary world don't arise in some ways out of the things they're doing within their genre. I'm reading Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings right now and it's very long and has long, dense chapters with subtle characterization and wry wordplay and while it might not be for everyone, it strikes me as the kind of book that could not be written successfully following the Save the Cat method and could not have been written in a few months, just practically. That doesn't mean that those more commercial books don't do their own thing well. But they do it in a different way, and a way that necessitates a different workflow.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:43 AM on January 7, 2018 [7 favorites]
But writing those romance books for hire was a big help in this, I suppose, because I got to see how the extreme other side did it. I did it, and I understand now better how it works and why. I've thought about self pubbing a bunch of romance novels, because there's money in there, but I also know how much it would take away from the books that matter for me, so I don't. I have friends who have made that choice who no longer have time to do work as "them," and it seems painful for them.
One of the things I've struggled with, though, in synthesizing all these things, is the belief in the commercial world that those literary guys are such navel gazers, prone to excess just because--that literary isn't doing its own genre things and that maybe the work pace and professional aspects of their corner of the literary world don't arise in some ways out of the things they're doing within their genre. I'm reading Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings right now and it's very long and has long, dense chapters with subtle characterization and wry wordplay and while it might not be for everyone, it strikes me as the kind of book that could not be written successfully following the Save the Cat method and could not have been written in a few months, just practically. That doesn't mean that those more commercial books don't do their own thing well. But they do it in a different way, and a way that necessitates a different workflow.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:43 AM on January 7, 2018 [7 favorites]
Just came off of writing a 110,000-word non-fiction book. It took three years.* Despite the differences between fiction and non-fiction, this all still rings true. And even though I know it's impossible to spend every minute of butt-in-seat time actually producing usable words, it's comforting to hear other authors talk about it — it's easy to feel like it's just me, especially when I spend eight hours staring at the screen and poring over primary and secondary sources, and then find at the end of the day that I've only written 150 words.
Of course, now that it's done, I alternate between feeling like I never have to work again (I wrote a book and it's going to be published by a real publisher, that's one of the Win Conditions of Life, right?) and feeling like my life is empty and I don't know what to do with myself. But my understanding is that this is normal too, especially after the first book.
(Also, I've never skiied, and I had no idea that it was such a brief experience! Now I'm strangely more interested in trying it....)
*Breakdown of my time:
Six months: Writing a proposal, getting an agent, getting a contract with a publisher;
Six months: research and interviews (there had been years of research on-and-off before this, but making it full-time was a big difference);
1.5 years: actual writing of the book;
6 months: editing, proofreading, etc. (Technically still in this stage, but the book is about to go off to press, so I don't think there's much left for me to do.)
posted by freelanceastro at 2:14 PM on January 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
Of course, now that it's done, I alternate between feeling like I never have to work again (I wrote a book and it's going to be published by a real publisher, that's one of the Win Conditions of Life, right?) and feeling like my life is empty and I don't know what to do with myself. But my understanding is that this is normal too, especially after the first book.
(Also, I've never skiied, and I had no idea that it was such a brief experience! Now I'm strangely more interested in trying it....)
*Breakdown of my time:
Six months: Writing a proposal, getting an agent, getting a contract with a publisher;
Six months: research and interviews (there had been years of research on-and-off before this, but making it full-time was a big difference);
1.5 years: actual writing of the book;
6 months: editing, proofreading, etc. (Technically still in this stage, but the book is about to go off to press, so I don't think there's much left for me to do.)
posted by freelanceastro at 2:14 PM on January 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
Seven years for one novel. Hmm. I'm ahead of the curve, then: I spent four and a half years writing and drawing a graphic novel, and about another year and a half self-pubbing it (including time spent being interrupted by life). Ain't won any awards with it admittedly.
posted by egypturnash at 5:39 PM on January 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 5:39 PM on January 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
Ain't won any awards with it admittedly.
You win the "I fucking did it, and that will be true forever" award, which is the same one I got when I finished my romance. Kudos!
posted by Orlop at 11:43 PM on January 7, 2018 [4 favorites]
You win the "I fucking did it, and that will be true forever" award, which is the same one I got when I finished my romance. Kudos!
posted by Orlop at 11:43 PM on January 7, 2018 [4 favorites]
Just returned from a voyage in final proof land, and it's on to the next (unrelated) novel. Series, really, because answering questions in one gave birth to its two siblings. The earliest one in chronological setting is taking a LOT more research than the other two, so I'm working on the second one (whose characters came to me first). It will be really hard, at the end, to say how much time each took. Especially since a brain injury in 2017 (what a year!) incapacitated me for about half the year. Butt in chair time just led to headaches, no intelligible words, until my doc told me to stop. Do I count those hours? I THOUGHT about the book, even if those thoughts didn't make much sense. But I got a new character out of it ... so maybe? I've given up counting. But the SEED for this series is a character who came to me in about 1991 or so. Do I count the intervening years?
The last two took maybe three years together, possibly four, concept to final print review in the hands of the publisher, but I wasn't working alone. I suspect that made it faster.
I'm not a great multitasker: when editing one book, I can't leave the world long and then re-enter. So when the editor had the manuscript for the next-to-last one, I wrote short stories and self-pubbed a coloring book to stay sane and occupied. But I know a good many writers CAN switch back and forth. No idea how you track that time without spreadsheets. And I'd rather be writing than using spread sheets.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 5:15 AM on January 8, 2018
The last two took maybe three years together, possibly four, concept to final print review in the hands of the publisher, but I wasn't working alone. I suspect that made it faster.
I'm not a great multitasker: when editing one book, I can't leave the world long and then re-enter. So when the editor had the manuscript for the next-to-last one, I wrote short stories and self-pubbed a coloring book to stay sane and occupied. But I know a good many writers CAN switch back and forth. No idea how you track that time without spreadsheets. And I'd rather be writing than using spread sheets.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 5:15 AM on January 8, 2018
Just a note that I finished Jon McGregor's newest, Reservoir 13, right around the new year. It was gorgeously written and well worth the time and not quite like anything I've read before.
Seven years is not a super-long time for writing a novel.
posted by thivaia at 7:40 AM on January 8, 2018
Seven years is not a super-long time for writing a novel.
posted by thivaia at 7:40 AM on January 8, 2018
Long time McGregor fan. I thought Reservoir 13 was good, but also the least good of the four novels he's written. It's too clean, needs a bit more dirt. If you like Jon, see also http://www.theletterspage.ac.uk
posted by unless I'm very much mistaken at 2:09 PM on January 8, 2018
posted by unless I'm very much mistaken at 2:09 PM on January 8, 2018
Thank you all. Finishing any work of fiction to the point that a single other human reads it is a massive accomplishment.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:51 PM on January 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by aspersioncast at 9:51 PM on January 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
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I am especially fond of the coffee time, the writing time, the long walk time (because Dickens) and the thinking up new clues that point to a new way to kill someone time.
I am also very careful not to say that last bit aloud, because this is Florida, and I don't want to sound like the rest of the people in the state.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 2:54 PM on January 6, 2018 [4 favorites]