This post brought to you by the letter P... For Pity.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

I usually bring anger, disgust, or general irritation with me into this community. Last night while I was doing one of my disgustingly long boring shifts... I'm an armored truck guard, busy, except when I get the occasional graveyard on-site job. Anyway, I was thinking about how much time LKH actually has to write each book. It makes me really pity her.

I did some math on how much LKH actually HAS to write per day to keep on schedule.

Writing two books a year, no break between books, no tours, no vacations, on a 5 day work schedule she would have to write a little over 4 pages a day. Doesn't sound too bad, tiring, but doable for at least a little while.
(I did this estimating each book to be about 500 pages long).

Now lets factor in that she's been writing these "Novel Lite" things and give them a page count of about 300. Under the same circumstances as stated above this brings her daily page requirements up to a little over 5.

Say she goes on tour and takes one vacation a year. Let's give her 3 weeks to do that. 15 working days. 6 pages a day to stay on schedule.

Now, she'll have writer's block, illness, family emergencies, the desire to take an extra day off here and there, etc... Lets giver her another 20 working days off a year to deal with all that. A little under 7 pages a day.

Best case world scenario she has to write about 7 pages a day to get everything out before deadline. She also writes for the comic a little, the newsletter, her stupid blog, takes more than one vacation a year, and her books have and will run longer than I've calculated... So we're looking at probably more like 10 pages a day with no time to revise/research.

Maybe when I write, I'm slow... But 10 pages a day even including research and revising seems like a lot to me.

No wonder she seems so burnt out in her blogs.

(Note: Math may be imperfect, it's purpose is to provide a general idea)

Edit:
I hate the woman, I hate the woman's books, but I'm weak of heart and feel pity for people that I don't like on occasion.

I'm aware that she brings it upon herself.

Comments

[fashi0n-mistake.livejournal.com]

The math seems right to me and if she is writing that many pages a day...Well. It's no wonder her later books are such disasters. Hell, if I had to have such a schedule, I'd fill my books up with sex scenes and pointless descriptions too!

Perhaps she should be writing less? The quality of her books these days is not worth such a schedule.

[dreadnot.livejournal.com]

Which...?

Leads us to conclude she should stop burning the tallow candle at both ends and spend some time going for quality over quantity?

Yes. Yes, I think that's a valid conclusion.

Or retirement. That's even better. Yes.

OT

[syrinx.livejournal.com]

Beautiful icon. What is that from?

[dreadnot.livejournal.com]

That's Dita von Teese. I know she isn't everyone's cuppa, but to me she is one of the most beautiful women of her generation.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

Retirement might not be a bad idea, or at least an extended break.... Hell, I'd settle for her to simply stop whining about it. She did it to herself, but I still feel a little bad for her... At least for today. Lol.

[dreadnot.livejournal.com]

She chooses her contracts and her schedule at this point. Is she perhaps still in desperate, starving writer mind in that she thinks she has to take everything that comes at her?

I can't say I'm sympathetic.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

<--- is weak. Feels bad for people she doesn't like sometimes.... Even... Republicans!

The shame.

[wonderbink.livejournal.com]

It's called compassion. I wouldn't be ashamed of it.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

Lol.

I was just trying to get a general idea and I had 12 hours to kill.

I think of LKH like a 14 year old. I think she's tricked herself into thinking she HAS to work that much, or maybe she does. She supports her family all on her own. Maybe if Jon had some kind of income it would relieve some of the burden... Of course, she's the one buying all these new cars and generally spending money like paper.

Eh, I don't know. I hate the women but since I think of her like a child it's hard not to feel a little bad for her on occasion.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

OMG road head...

I will never be able to read about the Foose without that visual...

-_-

[artemis-rex.livejournal.com]

You know, I would hate you for putting the idea of LKH, Jonboi and road head in my mind, but I laughed, so that balances things out.

Until the nightmares tonight ...

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

New comment because I realized I was using my definition of words instead of what they actually mean... Like a stupid person.

It's her fault. I shouldn't feel bad for her. But for some reason at this very moment. I do.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

The major flaw I see in your maths is assuming that every page of each new book is full of new and fresh material.

As opposed to at least the last four Anita books being:

Nathaniel walked in. [INSERT TWO-PAGE NATHANIEL SUMMARY]. He was wearing [INSERT HALF-PAGE BOYSHORTS DESCRIPTION INCLUDING REFERENCE TO JOB AS STRIPPER]. Following him was Micah. [INSERT MICAH DESCRIPTION, ESP. HAIR LENGTH AND BRIEF CHIMERA-ABUSE RECAP].

[WRITE ONE ORIGINAL PARAGRAPH OUTLINING "PLOT"]. [INSERT ARDEUR SUMMARY] [ARDEUR RISES] [INSERT GENERIC SEX SCENE] [INSERT ANITA "ACCIDENTALLY" MIND-PHONING RICHARD] [INSERT AFTERGLOW]

[INSERT RICHARD BASHING DOWN DOOR/ANITA-RICHARD ARGUMENT/RICHARD PROMISING TO DO BETTER/POTTED HISTORY INCLUDING PHRASE "had to come to terms with himself"/"not comfortable being a monster" + Anita's righteous outrage]



When we're getting the same descriptions of characters/information almost word for word, that should never be taking as much effort as, say, the first Merry book, which she had to do from scratch.

[plum-arden.livejournal.com]

The descriptions really get to me. Big time. I seriously couldn't care less if there were no descriptions in there. I realize now that it's just filler. Which is totally sad. But, I guess I'm crazy for wanting to use my imagination to put the scene together for myself and not have everything painted for me. I mean, purple eyes? Who cares. Ugh.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

I think she's self-deluded to the point of not realizing that.

Eh, responding to these comments makes me feel like I'm defending her.

I'm not excusing her for anything. It's her own doing. Blah blah blah, whatever. She's a sad little person, it gets my momentary pity.

[spittingfish.livejournal.com]

You should win... everything.

*hands over WIN*

[darkese.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that it's a rough schedule but it's easier once you use cut and paste like LKH.

I could write 50 pages of crap a day before breakfast. Throw in a huge chunk of it being cut and pasted crap and I think LKH is being pretty lazy actually. She should be churning out a 'novel' every two months.

[mystickiwi.livejournal.com]

For the longest time I noticed these crazy repeat descriptions, I've read several series who have used them *coughbabysittersclubcough* and always just sorta assumed it was a way to write a series that wasn't necessarily serial... kinda like each one was an episode of the simpsons, where only very rarely do you need to have watched the previous episode to be able to appreciate the next.
But now I think you're right and it's just laziness, because as you point out even the sex is copy pasted... ugh.

[no-ron.livejournal.com]

we mustn't forget, though, that authors juggling two or sometimes more ongoing series are not such a rarity. authors, who's work didn't devolve to the level of LKH's..

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

Just because one or even most people can handle it doesn't mean she can.

She's annoying. Her books are bad. Even the early one weren't great in my opinion. Air plane fiction.

I'm not excusing her, just saying I feel bad for her in the moment. Personality trait of mine. Occasional sympathy for people that don't deserve it.

[no-ron.livejournal.com]

everyone deserves a bit of compassion. even though not always in action.

[this-here-girl.livejournal.com]

I understand exactly what you're talking about, because this explains exactly why her books are so bad. It's not just her as the author, its also the editor. In NiC, Jean Paul kept calling her the same pet name so often I had to put the book down. What editor worth thier salt could not notice the blatent repitition?

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Her books aren't 500 pages in MS. And the novellas (WHY THE CHRIST CAN'T SHE USE THE RIGHT WORD?!?!?) aren't 300 pages in MS.

Also, she doesn't do anything else. She has staff to do her housekeeping, shopping, etc., manage her website, coordinate her participation in publishers' promotions, and so on.

Someone like, say, Elizabeth Bear or Caitlin Kiernan writes much more per year, in terms of wordcount, and does all the other stuff themselves.

I got no pity for "OH POOR ME IT'S SO HARD TO WRITE 5 PAGES OF DOOMCROTCH/DOOMWOMB EVERY DAY" coming from LKH.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

They're not, but Anita seems to run a lot longer that 500. It seemed like a good number. It's not supposed to be science. I did no research on book length and I didn't have access to any of them to check.

I never said everyone had to pity her. Just that right or wrong, I do.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

Eh, I'm past pity at this point because she buys her own hype. She truly feels that the world is waiting with bated breath for the next AB:VH or MG book to come out. I admit, at times I'm a greedy reader and wish that my favorite authors would publish quicker, but that said, I don't mind waiting for an author I love, because I know they've at least taken time with it.


People find time for what's important to them. With her heavy schedule, she not only has time to do many other things, but also the time to blog about them in detail. While I agree that having two concurrent series plus a comic is a lot of work and *contributes* to the downfall of the books, I don't think it's the main reason. The books are terrible nowadays because her sales went up and she has no reason to change.

[aine-de-danann.livejournal.com]

Jim Butcher has two concurrent series plus a comic (plus a young'un) going down and his stuff is not devolving at all. I hope it doesn't. I would wait, though, if he felt the need to take a break.
I've noticed no one mentioned the James Patterson method of having some podunk nobody "co-author" your book and then slap your name in big letters across the top. I will never buy another Patterson book with an ampersand on the cover.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

I definitely think you're correct in blaming Sci-Fi. It was a cool show. And you're correct, Jim Butcher has a lot going on but he's not sucking, his books still keep kicking ass. Small Favor was great.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

I don't think she's a poor writer, BUT I think that her writing has severely suffered for a plethora of reasons.

And yes, you're right, Jim Butcher can admit when he's wrong. He knows he's only human. LKH has lost sight of that.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Don't forget myriad short stories he contributes to anthologies.

[countessof-roth.livejournal.com]

Stephen King I think publishes about 2 books a year. Most of his books top the 600+ mark and he manages to do it.

On the other hand, I am not a professional writer and I was an English major. I decided to become so very late in my college "career" and was taking 4 lit/grammar etc classes at once. I'd estimate that I had to write a 4-5 page paper about every night AND work a full time job, an additional part time job AND do my other homework from my non-lit classes.
Yeah I was burnt out at the very end, however, I had what I think is a lot more on my plate. She has one job, and she does it poorly. My sister, who has had 2 years of junior college and got mediocre grades in every Lit class she took writes better "rough" drafts than LKH's finished books.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

I can see how that kind of a schedule would merit some sympathy. Even I felt a twinge of it when I read what the math brings the page count to per day. Though I think the biggest problem LKH has isn't the page count. It's that she's burnt out and has been since even before her workload reached this level. She's made it clear she writes because it is her job. Not because she enjoys it anymore.

Maybe she thinks that if she isn't constantly putting something out people will forget her name and she'll drop off the charts, or worse yet have to climb to get back up on them again? Everything she says in her blogs is her trying to get a response from her troos, she wants to wallow in the sympathy and for them to remember how hard life is for her when they read her books.

She really needs to take a year off and write nothing. It would give her a chance to absorb new ideas and rekindle what imagination she once had. Because as several other comments have basically said, the sex scenes and descriptions are just filler. These past few books are nothing but filler. Very little time has passed in each of the books and both her series are just treading water because she's too burnt out by the schedule she's undertaken and can't think of any way for the series to progress. She probably won't take any time off since she's obviously too afraid of the public forgetting her name.

[duchym.livejournal.com]

I agree that she needs to take a year or two off. She is completely burned out, and it very clearly shows in every book and every blog.

After that, she needs to go to a realistic schedule - perhaps one book release a year, with Merry and Anita alternating years. If nothing else, it would give her publishers time to properly edit and proof read her stuff.

Perhaps other authors can handle more than oen series, but LKH simply cannot - and the proof is in how badly her work has devolved.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

I actually worry about other writers who don't currently suck getting roped into book deals in addition to their main book series.

I honestly think LKH's problems are:
1. ego
2. getting into too many obligations
3. no editor willing to stand up to her
4. too much flattering from her fans/husband.

Because I liked the first 8 books so much, I keep hoping that things will get better. I keep reading all her books because it's like a train wreck and I can't look away. The last one, Blood Noir, really felt like a filler book. Bleh.

[duchym.livejournal.com]

Yes, she needs a truly ruthless editor with cast iron balls and the patience of a saint.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

Lol!
You're so right!

[this-here-girl.livejournal.com]

That's right, who marries the president of thier own fan club? And, I don't mean that sarcastically, I mean that in the sense that how can you get past the whole fanboy thing to actually start a healthy relationship. She's basically insuring that there is a fans lips planted squarely on her butt both literally and metaphorically speaking.

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Not that it really matters, considering we're dissecting LKH's lack'o'talent, but let's look at things in concrete publishing terms.

Publishers don't care about page counts. Honestly, they don't. If the book is 300 pages or 700 pages, it's still gonna run the same price on the shelf, and have roughly the same costs to produce. (There *IS* a page count that marks the breakpoint to the next price range, but I forget what it is offhand....1000-ish, I want to say.)

No, what publishers care about, no matter what the writing form, is word count. Shorts are paid on an x-cent-per-word basis, and novels are shopped around as "120K word Manuscript XYZ" (yes, publishing standard is to put the title of any work in ALL CAPS).

(There's a few formulas out there to determine word count, but we'll ignore those, and stick to MS Word's Word Count function instead).

So, let's figure your hardcover printed page has 300 words per page. So....her last three Anita books averaged 427 pages, so that's just under 128K words. The last three Merry books averaged 319 pages in hardcover, so those clock in at 96K words (which is close to scraping the bottom of the publishable barrel -- most sf/fantasy houses won't accept a manuscript under 90K words, and some want 100K and up).

So, to write one each per year, she has to write 224K words. Writing 5 days a week, that's 260 days and 860 words per day. Using the OP's guesstimates for time off, she has 225 working days, needing just over 1000 words per working day. Which equates to just over 3 publishable hardcover pages per working day to deliver her tripe.

Your typical writer can write between 3K and 15K words per day, depending on just how insistent the voices in their head may be. (I personally know one best selling author who wrote FOUR 150K+ novels in the span of 4 months). Let's say Joe Q. Writer averages 5K words per writing day. That means only 45 days of dedicated writing to produce that 224K words. Even lowballing at 3K words/day, you'd only need 75 days.

Look. I know that writers vary in writing speed. Lois Bujold takes a year to a year and a half per. Eric Flint and Dave Weber write 3 to 5 massive novels a year (I remember Weber once saying he wrote close to 1.5 *million*) words annually). But if all she has to do is write 900 words a day, she should seriously consider unplugging the pc and finding some new means of employment, because she can't cut it as a writer.

Yeesh, putting it those terms shows she's even worse a writer than the OP suggested.

[snipervalentine.livejournal.com]

*nodnodnod*

Exactly.

As as I've already pointed out, a "manuscript page" in no way equates to a printed page in the eventual book. When LKH talks about how many pages she's written, she means number of pages X 250 words. Exactly 250 words. Therefore, her whopping 10-page written day recently resulted in approximately 2500 words. No wonder she's late.

Personally, I think that recent seven-figure deal for the next three AB:VH books has given her a severe case of performance anxiety. The ankle, her muses not speaking to her and so on, are just excuses for not being able to get it up, so to speak.

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

Let's see. Dave Freer averages 2.5K words per day. Eric Flint averages 7K. Steven Stirling averages 17K. All three write three or more novels each year.

And Laurell can't manage 1K? She should give it up now.

[othellia.livejournal.com]

During NaNoWriMo, participants have 30 DAYS to write 50,000 words, which amounts to an average 2500 words a day.

Isn't it an average of 1667 words? If it was 2500, I think I'd die come November. (It's my busiest month of the year.)

Anyways, like you said. The key fact in all of this is that writing is her job and she has all day to do it. To use The Killing Dance as an example... It clocks in at about 130,000 words, like rosencrantz said, and on Word with default margins and spacing, it's only 238 pages.

If we were to go by Word page count alone, like our speshul snowflake does, and take into consideration the 225 working day schedule... she has to write exactly 1.06 Word pages a day. But wait, you say, there's Merry too! Even if the Merry books were as long as the Anita books, that'd still mean she has to only write 2.06 Word pages a day.

And now that we've got the grueling 2.06 Word pages a day, let's look at her schedule. Assuming that she keeps to the traditional 8 hour work day, and assuming that she takes 2 hours off for any phone conversations with publishers and Charles other nonimportant people, LKH needs to write 0.344 pages an hour to meet her deadlines, or approximately 225 words per hour.

Tortured artistic soul my ass.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

A thousand words a day isn't much when you think about it. Especially if you aren't having to source and justify and be all academical *looks at thesis*.

[duchym.livejournal.com]

Especially when you do not have to worry about driving your kid around for sports, cleaning your bathroom, or even washing your own (or your husband's) underwear.

While on the one hand, I honestly think that Hamilton is seriously burned out, on the other my mind goggles on how easy she has it - to the point where she whines about having to prepare breakfast on the weekend. She has absolutely no conception what life is like for the average person.

P for pity - you're FAR more generous than I am!

[cherose.livejournal.com]

Hi, all:

Her stated goal is 4 pages a day. She usually can manage that.

NOW: She tours for 2 months out of the year. She goes on vacation for a minimum of 6 weeks a year. She takes the day off to go shopping, she takes the day off to sleep in, she takes the day off to write her horridly self-loveing blog, she takes the day off to (FILL IN THE BLANK HERE). She's running as hard as she can to INSURE that she doesn't have the time to write.

Why is this, do you think? She's doing all the running for the same reason that she's been filling the books with sex/MORE sex/NASTY sex/BADLY MISINFORMED B&D/S&M sex fantasies/rape/incest/generally poorly written porn: she has run out of ideas. She has run out of inspiration. She, basically, has been to the well too many times, and now the well is dry.

Rather than take a year or two off to get a real rest, and turn her back on both of these series until she at least has SOME idea of where she really wants to go with them, she has continued to FORCE her ideas out, with the result that the books are, at best, boring - and, at worst, RANCID. In the meantime, she's so afraid that what she is turning out really IS rancid, that she is making the desparate attempt through her blog to make us all feel sorry for the poor pitty sing.

OF COURSE she's brought this on herself. She has surrounded herself with people that are NEVER, EVER, under NO circumstance CONCIEVABLE, tell her that what she's writing has ALREADY been written by a far better storyteller than she has devolved into. In my profession, they're called "enablers". In the real world, they're called toadeaters, sycophants and hangers-on.

She is going to have to write a minimum of 20 pages a day to meet her new deadline of November - and this presumes that all the pages will be perfect, will make sense within the context of the ALLEGED storyline and will need NO revisions (I DO hope that she at least learns how to use SpellCheck!). The OLD deadline was August. What do you want to be that the new deadline gets pushed back to after the new year dawns?