First, my website at https://www.laurellkhamilton.com is finally updated and a bit more user friendly for us and all of you. The Anita Blake books, and the Merry Gentry books are now in order of publication, for all who have asked. Second, I’ve answered some of the questions that were prompted by my latest blog.
A lot of people have been bitching that I do page count, rather than word count on my daily writing quota. First, why should you even care one way or the other? Second, I think everyone forgets that I’m 51, which means when I wrote my first short stories at age 17 it was on a manual typewriter. There was no word-processor to show me my word count at the bottom of my page. If I wanted a word count I had to do it the old fashioned way by counting average lines per page and then estimating words/characters per line, and then adding your pages in, and by the end of a writing session I wasn’t up to the math. I did it before I sent a story out to a magazine and put the word count at the top of the story as was professional format at the time, but my daily writing quota was pages, not words, because the math seemed laborious after my brain was fried from actually writing, or I’d had a really good writing session and my brian was euphoric with endorphins and I was too happy to do math. Math at the end of a day of wonderful creativity seemed like punishment to me, and still does. (Sorry all you math lovers, but it’s not my cup of happiness. )
But that’s why I do page count, instead of word count for my daily writing quota. Most writers form habits early on and if it works most writers, and artists, are loath to change it. I think we’re all a little superstitious as if changing one small thing will somehow make the magic go away. I know it sounds silly, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and setting myself 4 pages a day works better for me than saying I owe myself four thousand words before I can take a break, or quit for the day.
And onto my typing speed – I posted my typing speed in a bid to help some of the beginning writers feel better about not hitting my page count on my best days when I can do 20-40 pages in 6-8 hours. That’s counting only the pages I kept, not the ones that didn’t work. The pages that are completely unsatisfactory as I type are usually just toggled lower down on the page so that all my rough drafts have this enormous garbage section at the end of manuscript file of writing ideas, plot twists, or character breakthroughs that just didn’t work. I don’t delete it, because sometimes I find the scene really did work and I need it. If I deleted the “garbage” at the end of the day I’d have to rewrite the scene. (This was learned the hard way early on when I switched from typewriter to computer. It’s too damn easy to delete on a computer screen, at least with typed pages the pages are still in your office to dig through.) I wouldn’t type 200 words a minute on a standard typing test, because that’s not me writing my own fresh words. I have no idea how fast I type when copying, or taking dictation, because why would I bother copying someone else’s words, or take dictation from anyone, but my own imagination? But using my own writing as the speed test on the online tests it did come out to 200 wpm, and that is subtracting for mistakes. I spent years with computer buffers unable to keep up with my typing speed. The blinking cursor would sit at the end of the line beeping and complaining at me, and I would have to wait until the text on screen spilled out what I’d just typed, and then I could continue on, until I out typed the buffer again, and again, and . . . I love how fast computers are now, and that they don’t complain with noise that I’m typing faster than they prefer. (The picture attached to this blog is me today with my very first typewriter. We found it as we sorted through things recently. I’d totally forgotten where it was. Thanks to my Aunt Juanita, who loaned me the machine when I was in high school. Without her kindness I couldn’t have sent stories in for publication. I owe her a typewriter, but I’m keeping this one out of sentiment. )
And, yes, I actually have had writers with long standing and lovely careers of their own ask me how I produce so much in one writing session. (Writers are like all career people, we talk to each other. We share tricks of the trade, and talk shop, even those of us who are all bestsellers.) Most writers find that 2-4 hours is the maximum usable time for them to be writing, or trying to write. If they stay longer, it gains them nothing and makes it even harder for them to write the next day. On some glorious muse-driven days I can get 10-20 pages done in 2 hours, but usually it takes me 4-6 hours to do 4-8 pages. I’ve timed it and the first two hours of my writing is usually not very productive for pages to be kept at the end of the day, which are the only pages that go into my daily page count. I actually get the lion’s share of my pages done in the last 2-3 hours of the 5-8 hour session. I’ve tried to skip that first unfruitful 2 hours, by shortening my writing sessions to only 4 hours, but my process needs that 2 hour window of noodling at the keyboard, staring off into space, and basically banging my head against the computer, before something breaks free and the words flow. I hate that my writing process works this way, because it means that if I can’t get a huge block of uninterrupted time to write that my productivity suffers, a lot.
Now, once I hit the groove of a book then things change. Sitting down at the computer means words come immediately. The words flow and it’s all I can do to type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts, but that doesn’t happen until between 150-250 pages into a book. For the those first pages its more brute force than muse-driven, but I’ve learned without that force at the beginning of a novel I’m never going to get to the happy, dancing muses at the end.
