Examples of least days of effort--slacker fantasy thread

dondomat · Aug 22, 2014

Good luck; blessed be those in the slacker utopia

dondomat · Jun 12, 2015

Decided to add more people to the "a novel or two a decade" crowd.

Joseph Heller:

Novels

Catch-22 (1961)
Something Happened (1974)
Good as Gold (1979)
God Knows (1984)
Picture This (1988)
Closing Time (1994)
Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000)

And Umberto Eco:
[h=3]Novels[/h]

Il nome della rosa (1980; English translation: The Name of the Rose, 1983)
Il pendolo di Foucault (1988; English translation: Foucault's Pendulum, 1989)
L'isola del giorno prima (1994; English translation: The Island of the Day Before, 1995)
Baudolino (2000; English translation: Baudolino, 2001)
La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana (2004; English translation: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, 2005)
Il cimitero di Praga (2010; English translation: The Prague Cemetery, 2011)
Numero zero (2015)

heza · Jun 12, 2015

I wonder if I ever get my act together whether I could be a fast writer. I started a new MG novel. Upper MG fantasy runs somewhere between like 40-60K... I'm shooting for around 55K. I wrote 2K words in about an hour the other day. This (probably erroneously) leads me to believe I could finish this draft in under 30 hours. That'd be awesome. I'm sitting here with one of those brain schisms. My math tells me that's totally possible. My brain tells me it shouldn't be....

Sonsofthepharaohs · Jun 12, 2015

When pushed and/or highly motivated (and caffeinated), I can knock out a chapter a day. As my current WIP is 42 chapters or thereabouts, this implies I should be able to finish a book in 2 months (allowing for the odd lapse and real life priorities)

So why has it taken me three and a half years???

PandaMan · Jun 12, 2015

Kallithrix said:
When pushed and/or highly motivated (and caffeinated), I can knock out a chapter a day. As my current WIP is 42 chapters or thereabouts, this implies I should be able to finish a book in 2 months (allowing for the odd lapse and real life priorities)

So why has it taken me three and a half years???

***raises hand***

Oh, I know, I know, I know.

You're not pushing yourself, or
you're not motivated enough, or
not enough caffeine.

Am I right?

OR

it may have something to do with Djehuty. Lets face it, you love to endlessly torture him. :evil

dondomat · Jun 14, 2015

Well, that of course would be the utopia: write a novel in a week like Michael Moorcock, or in a month, like John Saul, only make the novel of the stature of The Silence of the Lambs or The Godfather or The Eagle Has Landed, then reap the spoils for a decade, until it's time to dedicate another week or month to fuel the laziness of the next decade...

Michel_Cayer · Jun 19, 2015

Donna Tartt:

The Secret History (1992)
The Little Friend (2002)
The Goldfinch (2013) - won the Pulitzer Prize

She has a few short stories listed but I don't know if she does anything other than that. She is a genius.

Marianne Kirby · Jun 19, 2015

There's actually a really interesting sfwa blog post about this kind of thing -- she went from writing 2k a day to writing 10k a dayL

http://www.sfwa.org/2011/12/guest-p...riting-2000-words-a-day-to-10000-words-a-day/

10k a day seems a little...extreme for me. Plus I don't have 5-7 hours to dedicate to writing a day, alas. But I do think her metric is fascinating.

Dhewco · Jun 19, 2015

I wrote 3 full novels between 2001-2008. I've stopped and started about 10 other works since that time. Some of that time was taken with writing query letters and discussing revisions to the few agents who cared and the one unknowledgeable agent who tried to sell my YA fantasy novel. However, I think most of that time was eaten by depression and a sense of failure. I had several 'good' ideas, but I'd burn out on one and quickly shift to another.

Right now, I have two novels that I need to work on. The new one mentioned in my 'creepy protagonist' thread and my novel about the 12-14yo serial killer of sex offenders. The latter book is 50k into a 80k projected first draft.

dondomat · Feb 23, 2016

Iain Banks: the man who invented 1980's dark postmodernism, and who in his spare time single-handedly kicked off the New Wave of Space Opera. Publishing a Very Serious Book one year and a Deep Space Adventure the next. International bestseller. Very improbable dude. R.I.P.
At the height of his powers he would write an intellectual bestseller or a space yarn in 3-4 months and dedicate the remaining 8-9 months to leisure.
Like John Saul but British, in the organizational sense.

http://www.spikemagazine.com/iain-banks-interview.php

Typically he starts writing each year in October and on average takes three or four months to produce his final draft. He says the trick is to first write the novel in your head. “Once you have your characters speaking to you in your head you can turn it in on itself and essentially the book writes itself. ”
While Banks enjoys nine months or so off every year, you’d be hard-pressed to say he was idle with his time.
At 40 he learnt to ride motorbikes, and last year for his 50th birthday he took up flying. So is Mr Banks baulking at the onset of old age?

Examples of least days of effort--slacker fantasy thread

dondomat

dondomat

heza

Sonsofthepharaohs

Still writing the ancient Egyptian tetralogy

PandaMan

Panda girls are the best!

dondomat

Michel_Cayer

Marianne Kirby

Blue Hair, Don't Care

Dhewco

dondomat