rachel aaron | Karavansara

OK, for a laugh.
I was reading an award-winning novelist‘s interview the other day.
I like reading writers talking about their work flow, their methods, their quirks.
Turns out the guy worked on his latest, award-winning novel

six hours a day, every day for four years, without pause

And being the sort of person I am, coming to this statement I started thinking in numbers.

Now, four years makes

(365 x 4) + 1 = 1461 days

working six hours a day, every frigging day of the week for four years makes

1461 x 6 = 8766 hours

Now comes the hard part – according to Amazon, the guy’s award-winning novel is 411 pages long in hardback. Let’s place it at around 150.000 words.

150.000 / 8766 = 17 words per hour

That’s when I started laughing. Continue reading →

There’s something I noticed – I’m getting fast.
At writing, I mean.
Not the mechanical act – I’m still a lousy typist.
The writing, getting the ideas on paper, has become easier.

In the last 24 hours I did the main research and put down the core 5000 words for a short pulpy historical essay I hope I’ll publish by the end of the month, I hammered out 750 words of a story I’d like to pitch to a very hard market overseas, and wrote the detailed synopsis and outline for two novels I’m trying to place with another publisher.

Plus this post – that is very short – and another, longer one for my Italian blog. Continue reading →