I finished my tenth novel today.
As I've been struggling to finish this latest book (struggling because I wrote all 88,000 words of it in the last four weeks, and that kind of focus is draining), I decided to do a rough approximation of how much writing I've done since I started college/came back from my mission. (During my time in Florida, I didn't really write anything, though I talked about ideas with roommates or companions. Writing--genuinely putting effort into my stories--started in July of 2004, after I had been home from my mission for about a month. I've been writing ever since.) Since I'm bad at math, I decided to make a spreadsheet that would do the calculations for me.
This is what I have so far:
I'm only talking about finished products, but assuming those numbers are right (I'm a little dubious about Ash and Fire being that long, but, whatever), then I'm a touch shy of 1.3 million words written in the last 13 years.
This isn't as large of an accomplishment as it may sound like: Professional authors write one to two novels a year--some as many as a half dozen--and some people (coughBrandonSandersoncough) can put out more books, all of which are longer than mine, in a year than the average.
If you were to trace how much time I spent on each one, you'd get a different understanding. The behemoth books of Terra Campaign and Writ in Blood, combined equaling more than a half million words, represent years of work. Shorter pieces, like Chelsea Washington (which took a couple months) and Dante and Cloudfarmers (which were NaNoWriMo books) all indicate that I can put together a story in a shorter time frame. The books aren't necessarily better books because of their length--in either direction--but it can be satisfying to have an entire piece done, top to bottom, in less time than the mammoth books require.
With the exceptions of Dante and Conduits, all of these books are fantasy of some degree or another, though Chelsea Washington is more of an urban fantasy. I think that's one thing that I need to improve: The diversity of what I write. Not in terms of representation. Only Tales and Dante have male-exclusive leads. Every other one has a female protagonist, point-of-view character, and about half of them have Latino, Black, or other minority group as the prototype for the protagonist (since those labels don't really apply to the imaginary worlds, I don't call them that, but the characters came into my head with those aspects of their appearance pretty much already set). This isn't to toot my own horn, but instead draw my attention to the fact that, though the characters and settings are diverse, my writing itself isn't.
I don't have any horror, my attempt at mystery (Ash and Fire) didn't really pan out as such, the young adult novel (Chelsea Washington) is an imperfect attempt at the genre, and though there's plenty of romance throughout my body of work, there's little attempt at exploring sexuality, marriage, or the complexity of sexual identity (though I have a couple of lesbian characters throughout, an asexual character, and a bisexual to go along with the hetero stuff that's in there, too; since I tend to write women protagonists, I don't have any gay characters yet). Most significantly, though, I don't have any mainstream fiction. I've talked about this before, but it's an area that feels like a blank spot in my resume, as it were. I mean, no one is publishing all of these books--some of them, I wouldn't let you read them if you paid me*--and even if someone liked what I wrote enough to publish me, none of these stories, as they stand, would head out into the world.
Still, I think, after 1.3 million words in fantasy (a number I reach if you also count all of the started-and-discarded stories that I've written), maybe it's time that I finished a book that takes place in the real world?
----
* Kidding. I'd totally let you read my stuff if you paid me. In fact, that's the whole point of me wanting to be a professional author in the first place.
As I've been struggling to finish this latest book (struggling because I wrote all 88,000 words of it in the last four weeks, and that kind of focus is draining), I decided to do a rough approximation of how much writing I've done since I started college/came back from my mission. (During my time in Florida, I didn't really write anything, though I talked about ideas with roommates or companions. Writing--genuinely putting effort into my stories--started in July of 2004, after I had been home from my mission for about a month. I've been writing ever since.) Since I'm bad at math, I decided to make a spreadsheet that would do the calculations for me.
This is what I have so far:
 |
| All of these are finished novels, and some of them I even like. The numbers have decimal points, for some random reason. Ignore those extra zeroes. |
I'm only talking about finished products, but assuming those numbers are right (I'm a little dubious about Ash and Fire being that long, but, whatever), then I'm a touch shy of 1.3 million words written in the last 13 years.
This isn't as large of an accomplishment as it may sound like: Professional authors write one to two novels a year--some as many as a half dozen--and some people (coughBrandonSandersoncough) can put out more books, all of which are longer than mine, in a year than the average.
If you were to trace how much time I spent on each one, you'd get a different understanding. The behemoth books of Terra Campaign and Writ in Blood, combined equaling more than a half million words, represent years of work. Shorter pieces, like Chelsea Washington (which took a couple months) and Dante and Cloudfarmers (which were NaNoWriMo books) all indicate that I can put together a story in a shorter time frame. The books aren't necessarily better books because of their length--in either direction--but it can be satisfying to have an entire piece done, top to bottom, in less time than the mammoth books require.
With the exceptions of Dante and Conduits, all of these books are fantasy of some degree or another, though Chelsea Washington is more of an urban fantasy. I think that's one thing that I need to improve: The diversity of what I write. Not in terms of representation. Only Tales and Dante have male-exclusive leads. Every other one has a female protagonist, point-of-view character, and about half of them have Latino, Black, or other minority group as the prototype for the protagonist (since those labels don't really apply to the imaginary worlds, I don't call them that, but the characters came into my head with those aspects of their appearance pretty much already set). This isn't to toot my own horn, but instead draw my attention to the fact that, though the characters and settings are diverse, my writing itself isn't.
I don't have any horror, my attempt at mystery (Ash and Fire) didn't really pan out as such, the young adult novel (Chelsea Washington) is an imperfect attempt at the genre, and though there's plenty of romance throughout my body of work, there's little attempt at exploring sexuality, marriage, or the complexity of sexual identity (though I have a couple of lesbian characters throughout, an asexual character, and a bisexual to go along with the hetero stuff that's in there, too; since I tend to write women protagonists, I don't have any gay characters yet). Most significantly, though, I don't have any mainstream fiction. I've talked about this before, but it's an area that feels like a blank spot in my resume, as it were. I mean, no one is publishing all of these books--some of them, I wouldn't let you read them if you paid me*--and even if someone liked what I wrote enough to publish me, none of these stories, as they stand, would head out into the world.
Still, I think, after 1.3 million words in fantasy (a number I reach if you also count all of the started-and-discarded stories that I've written), maybe it's time that I finished a book that takes place in the real world?
----
* Kidding. I'd totally let you read my stuff if you paid me. In fact, that's the whole point of me wanting to be a professional author in the first place.