Blogflog - My Page Count Sucked Today

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: My Page Count Sucked Today
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

Some writers work for a certain number of hours, or an hour, and when the time is up they’re done for the day regardless of how much, or how little, they’ve written. Others do word count, a thousand words a day, or four thousand, and when they hit that, they’re done. I’ve always done page count, and I work until I’m done, or until I’m too exhausted to keep going. I post my page count for the day on line, a lot. Okay, I post it on Twitter a lot. My minimum page count goal is usually eight pages a day, but sometimes I’ll lower it to four pages, because some books are harder to write than others. I routinely do over ten pages a day when I’m deep into a book. When I’m really in the zone I can do twenty-plus pages a day for a week, or close to it. I have a lot of beginning writers, and even seasoned writers chastise themselves, because they can’t rival my page count per day. First, I type over two hundred words a minute, so that helps, and no, I have no idea how I type that fast, it’s a gift. But since a lot of the writers on line seem to get upset, because they can’t do it, I wanted to be sure and post today’s page count. Two pages, yeah you read that correctly, I have two pages for the entire day.

When I’m in the zone I can get twenty pages in two hours, but today it took me about eight hours to get those two pages. They’re good pages, strong pages, but it was a very frustrating day. I worked in the morning for no pages, and then went back after lunch, because I knew I had gym in the late afternoon, so I wanted to work until I had to leave for that. That’s how I got my two pages, by going back for a second session after a completely fruitless one that morning. Sometimes when the morning is completely dry like that I’ll give myself the rest of the day off, because the creative tank is empty and needs to fill up by doing something else, or I’m not sure what comes next in the book, or I know what’s next but don’t know exactly how to get from point A to point B. At times like that a few hours, or even a day away from the book can let my imagination work, and when I set down again I’ll feel refreshed, I’ll know what comes next, or I’ll know how to write the next part. But sometimes I just have to keep slogging away, until the creative log jam bursts and the waters come rushing through, or in this case trickling through. If I had given up and not gone back after lunch I wouldn’t have the two pages which lets me know exactly what comes next, and precisely how to write the next scene. I don’t feel a single hour at my keyboard was wasted today, because I know I needed every frustrating minute to finally break through what was clogging up the creative pipeline. Would I have rather had a day of twenty pages flowing like water from the proverbial cleft rock? Hell, yes, every writer would, but I’ve learned that the “bang your head against the problem” days are valuable to me as an artist. I don’t know why they’re necessary, but for me they seem to be part of my process especially early in a book. Tomorrow should be easier, because I planted the seeds of success today with those two hard won pages.

I’ve written and published over thirty novels, and I still have days when the words do not flow, the pages do not add up to much, so for all of you writers out there that have been watching me post my page count on line and despairing, I just wanted you to know that not every day is a home run, not even for me. Sometimes I’m just happy to get a runner on first base, and still be at bat. If you got any writing done today, give yourself a point, whether it was a few sentences, or paragraphs, or pages, if you sat your butt down and actually wrote – congratulations! Because writers, write, so you write your bad self into the next paragraph, or chapter, or short story tomorrow and think to yourself. Laurell K. Hamilton only did two pages yesterday, I can do two pages. You can, you know, you really can. Happy hunting!

Comments

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

200 words a minute? No wonder her books are overwritten messes. Less words, more thought.

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

I call bogus. The fastest recorded speed on a computer keyboard is 212 wpm, and that's using a Dvorak keyboard.

http://www.ratatype.com/learn/average-typing-speed/

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Yep, she's flat-out lying.

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

That's a really interesting infographic.

But you're forgetting - LKH is special.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm calling bull. I'm a transcriptionist, and my typing speed is considered pretty damn high; I'm at 95 wpm. I do not buy that LKH breaks 200.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I type erratically, fying over 90wpm and slowing down to around 30wpm, and frequently backspacing when I type something different to my original idea, or a typo or whatever, which evens me out around 75wpm IIRC. The thing is it doesn't matter how FAST you type, you still have to think about what you're typing while you're typing it and not just spooge on endlessly. The woman is clearly a lunatic.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

That too! I type 95wpm when I have something to type that I don't have to make up myself! Typing stuff as it comes into my head isn't actually always as fast as transcribing (although sometimes it can be faster, if I'm really on a roll). Actually paying attention to things like sentence structure and whether I'm using commas correctly or misusing loose vs lose slows me down, as it damn well should.

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

Bragging bits aside this is fairly sound advice because I constantly feel like a failure if I open word, manage a paragraph in four hours and get distracted by something else out of frustration.

And yeah, I grew up with a manual typewriter without a word count so I admit I worked by page count. I've tried to switch to word count, but alas, I still judge my progress by that annoying little number in the top header. :(

[apep727.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you can still get a decent estimate from that. With Times New Roman, 12 pt., single spaced (what I use when I'm writing), you get ~500 words a page.

But as I have no idea what setup LKH uses, I can't estimate how productive she is.

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

True, true.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

She's said previously that she uses 12pt TNR on double line spacing and 1 inch margins. Which should work out to be roughly ~250 words per page.

So her bare minimum of four pages per day only works out to ~1,000 words. I know it all eventually adds up to a novel, but if you throw in that 200wpm typing claim, that's five whole minutes of work.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

1000 words would be a very respectable amount to produce most days for most writers, imo. But LKH always writes stream-of-consciousness vomit, and that kind of writing should really net more than that most of the time.

The 200wpm thing is throwing me. I wonder if she actually believes she does this. I don't know whether to feel sorry for her because she's obviously got severe delusions, or be pissed off that she's consciously lying.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeah 1,000 words a day is nothing to sneeze at because like I said, it all adds up. This tweet (https://twitter.com/LKHamilton/status/492359980121481216) is where she says she does type that fast with her "own stuff" and that typing tests don't write novels. So she probably thinks she does 200wpm when it could be more like 200 characters per minute and if Wikipedia is right, characters per minute is about 4x more than wpm, so she'd be typing at 50wpm, which is still well above average.

What this doesn't take into account is accuracy. Which is the part that kills me because sure she could type hella fast, but just how many typos is she making? I used to RP with someone who could type at over 100wpm and while it was great to have replies happen at lighting speed, the nightmare was editing chats in order to post. Not only were there typos everywhere, but she'd tap her period key...while thinking..of...the next part...so I'd have to decipher if...it was intentional..or not..

Basically faster is not always better.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

So she claims that one can type faster while writing a novel than while taking a typing test. Okay! I don't believe she thinks much about the crap she puts down, but I refuse to believe she doesn't think at all or that she's one of the fastest typists in the world.

[glimmerfox.livejournal.com]

That was my tweet she replied to! I was hoping that she would catch the bait. I guess that's her way out of getting an official typing test.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

I could easily see her confusing characters per minute rather than words per minute. I think word tracks your character count at the bottom. Especially considering she really had the whole technophobe thing going on for forever.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

To be unnecessarily vicious, perhaps she means with the aid of Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V?

"Fuck me
Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V
, Micah,
Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V
," I screamed, "Oh fuck,
Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V
me,
Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V Ctrl+V"

*opens txt file on side, highlights
"Feed, Anita, feed!" Micah gasped
and pastes*

*pastes
He brought me screaming, and my nails painted little half-moons on his back
and goes searching for other phrases*

*leans back in chair and yells "Jon, how do I describe this latest superpower?"*
*Jon yells back, "Something metaphysical, honey, I'm playing Skyrim!"*
*types
Something metaphysical spilled over me like honey: I felt, pain like a piercing thing hitting me in the knee, as the dragonborn power spilled over me
and leans back*
*wipes brow*
*shouts "Thanks, dear!"*
*"Mom, this writing thing is too weird for me," Trinity remarks loudly from the next room*
*types
"Only you could carry this power, Anita," Chang Bibi said reverently, "for it is too strange even for the tigers."
and yells "Can I put that in my blog, Trinity?"*
*upon receiving an affirmative, opens up Twitter and Facebok*
*wipes brow*
*oh, writing is, such, HARD WORK*
*haters just, don't understand*

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Hah!

I think that "viciousness" is entirely necessary, btw.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

LOL so definitely true.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

I never understood why someone would use double spacing while writing, especially when it's so easy to change it before submitting.

And yeah, her supposed writing speed kinda conflicts with her actual productivity. If she were actually writing that much, that fast, she wouldn't be turning in first drafts so late. And if she is that productive, I'm thinking that she takes a lot of days off to "refill her creativity tank".

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I think you pretty much nailed it on the speed vs actual productivity thing. But I'll also throw in a side of organisation. If LKH had even a vague outline for the books -- and I don't just mean a post-it with [BASIC PLOT IDEA] -- she might not be floundering as much as she is now. I honestly don't think she knows what the next AB book is about. Or the one after that. Or after that. And it's not like any of the past books will really influence any of the future ones because she's so committed to writing each one as a standalone despite being some 20+ volumes into the series. Also she said she hated being tied to a multiple book plot arc when writing the MG books and never wanted to do it again. So we can probably discount any previous plotlines being resolved. And it's not like characters actually evolve in order to influence the plot either, because they'd need to have more personality than "pretty."

The frustrating thing is that she always says "I've got notes," to reader questions about things they want to see. It's funny how the things she's got notes on hardly ever show up in the actual books.

I'm pretty sure if she were halfway organised and as productive as she claimed, she'd be doing more than one book a year and neither MG nor AB would be circling the drain.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

And it's not like a series can't be mostly stand-alone books with almost no inter-book continuity. Look at the Dresden Files books - most of them are fairly self-contained, but they still have characters and plot lines develop.

Yeah, she's "got notes". And Joe McCarthy had a list of Communists in the State Department.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Double-spacing is easier to read. I use 1.5 spacing, because that seems to be the sweet spot for me, but I can't deal with single-spacing. I could 15 years ago, but not now.

[korax9.livejournal.com]

Wooooooooow. Just wow. Okay, I agree that the general idea of "just write" isn't bad, but that post could not have been more self-congratulatory.

I have a lot of beginning writers, and even seasoned writers chastise themselves, because they can’t rival my page count per day.
It's not that they chastise themselves for writing slow or too little; they chastise themselves because they cannot rival the great Laurell one.

so for all of you writers out there that have been watching me post my page count on line and despairing
I'm sure they are legion.

Laurell K. Hamilton only did two pages yesterday, I can do two pages. You can, you know, you really can. Happy hunting!
Oh gosh, if the great LKH only wrote two pages, then I guess I might try!

Seriously, this reads like self-parody by this point. Maybe she could have typed a little less than two hundred words per minute and spent a little more time proof-reading this (probably well-meant advice) to where it didn't sound like she was setting herself up as the benevolent benchmark to every writer's creative output.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

I realize it might just be the lighting, but part of me is terribly amused that the words in that picture are in purple ink.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

She's so far up her own asshole she could give herself a colon exam. What writers are despairing because they're not more like Laurell K. Hamilton? Is this just a line that Jon her husband Jon is feeding her?

[jamoche]

I get the impression she thinks writing means "Start with page one, write what you expect to see on the printed page, continue to the end."

Does she never write outlines? Put in placeholder blocks of "this has to happen here, figure it out later" and go on? Write dialog in script form just to get the gist of what needs to be said?

Aw, what am I saying?

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

Write dialog in script form just to get the gist of what needs to be said?
She does.

The tragedy is that she leaves it in the final novel.

A predicted excerpt from the next novel:
"Let me test my understanding," I said. "You mean that Asher likes other men's bodies more than my tight wetness."
"That is correct, ma petite."
"You mean that he likes men."
"Yes."
"I mean that I like men," Asher snarled from a corner. His mouth was in that lovely pout that meant he was pouting.
"But I don't understand," I said. "He's bi, maybe preferring men, but he's not gay-gay." If he was gay, I might be able to understand why he didn't want to have sex with me, though I wondered if he just had issues with women from Belle Morte, but he wasn't. He liked to have sex with women. What had changed?
"I like cooooock more than pussyyyyyy," Asher elaborated, his eyes burning with blue fire. "COCK! COCK! COCK! PENIS! DICK! MAN SAUSAGE!" He stood up, fangs bared.
"But how could you forsake sex with Anita?" Nathaniel said, tied to the ceiling by his own hair. "I love her tits. How can you give up her tits?"
"BITS OVER TITS!"
"But ma petite is the most amazing lay any of us have ever had," Jean-Claude said with a curiously blank expression, the way all the old ones could. "How could you ever give up ma petite's wet tightness?"
"Because I like dick," Asher snarled. "And all the dick keeps plunging into Anita. Even yours. I want some dick to myself. Because I don't like just kissing and holding hands to tighten things low in Anita's body, I LIKE DICK. Do you understand, Jean-Claude?"
"Wait," I broke in, my brow furrowing. "Are you saying... are you really..." I struggled to understand. This was just too weird for me. I could be accepting of bisexuality, hell, I was heteroflexible myself, but... "Asher, are you saying you like dick?"
He screamed and slammed his head into the wall, and all the guns in the room went up to point at him.

[Asher death scene follows...]

"But I don't understand, Jean-Claude," I mused. "What do you think made him do it?"
"Ma petite, it may well be that some men simply like dick."
"I know some men are gay, but what about Asher? He could enjoy my pussy. Why didn't he just settle for that? Why did he have to be greedy and want dick too?"
"For as long as I knew him, Asher always liked dick. It was just something that, to him, came au naturel." ((That's French, right? Ask Trinity. She'll Google it using her Babblephish orwhatever. Kids these days.))
"But, I mean, I'm aamazing. It's enough for the other men, what about him?"
[continue on for ten pages...]

[apep727.livejournal.com]

That's great. Only two problems:

1) Hamilton refuses to kill or let go of any character her self-insert Anita ever cared about. Otherwise she would have gotten rid of Richard years ago (of course, he also serves as a nice punching bag).

2) Hamilton will almost never use the words "cock", "penis", "dick", "pussy", or any other word for genitalia. No, it's all "his body" and "my opening", because despite being all "dark" and "edgy", she's still as immature as a twelve-year-old when it comes to sex.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :D

1) Yeeeah, but she's showing a distinct distaste for Asher, and it's beginning to read a LOT like Haven's mentions did before she killed him off in Bullet. It's been speculated for a while that he's on the chopping block. I hope not, since Richard's lost all his fire in favor of sucking up to Anita, but if anyone's going, he probably is. :\ And Sholto of the body-image-angst got killed off by a random assassination attempt in the Merry Gentry books, so I'm concerned for his probable Anitaverse counterpart...
2) Asher's been known to use "pussy", and Richard (GASP!) used "dick" in Shutdown. I took this as license to hope that PERHAPS she's getting a bit less neurotic about ever using terms for genitals in freaking SEX SCENES... Too optimistic? :P

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

The last timed writing test was to work in a police department's office as a secretary. The average they wanted was 30-40 wpm. I broke 80-90. (Didn't get hired, but y'know.)

That's also including the impulsive need to fix errors because I'm weird.

So I call bullshit on her 200 wpm. That's how fast you have to type to be a court reporter, using a fucking stenograph.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

By the way, whoever mentioned that posts like this (trouble writing, talking about the book giving her trouble) were coming. Nail on the head.