Some of you might not be aware that George R.R. Martin has been for some years catching a lot of flak because he takes so long to finish a new episode of his bestselling fantasy series. Got hate websites up and running, and people pissing in his direction hither and yon.
Fans can get real possessive of a story, and come to believe they are not only entitled to it but that they know better than the guy writing it how it should go.
Me, I figure it's his business, and he can do it like he wants. We don't like it, that's our problem. Sure, a writer has to consider his or her fans, but in the end, writers are the ones with asses in chairs producing stories, and how they do it is up to them.
That fans want them to hurry is a given. I have a list of writers I like who are too damned slow for me, and I want them to go faster. George is right up there.
Still, I can understand how fans might crunch the numbers.
Martin's latest book, ADWD, runs about a thousand pages, and that works out to about 1500 manuscript pages, plus or minus a few.
If it took five years from start to finish, then that's 300 pages a year, or about 8/10ths of a manuscript page per day. Less than this blog post.
But, hey, nobody can expect him to work 365 days a year. That's not fair. Give the guy a break.
Let's say his working year is close to what most people do on a real nine-to-five, job, call it 200 days. That's weekends and holidays, off, plus a five-week vacation.
So he'd have to average a page and a half a working day to get the 1500 ms pages in five years.
That's not a lot of words, even with rewrites. Do a few days of ten or fifteen pages, you can take a couple more weeks off and still get your average, right?
Now, of course, writing fiction is not a science, and writers don't always write every day, but still, that doesn't sound like nose to the grindstone hours, does it? Given that most writers I know can crank out a page and a half in fifteen or twenty minutes.
And how long is your work day? And what do you make compared to what George makes?(see the immediately prior post for some theoretical numbers ...)
And how long is your work day? And what do you make compared to what George makes?(see the immediately prior post for some theoretical numbers ...)