Writers Write

Harlan Ellison was known for his opinion that writers write. And he proved this time and again by writing at parties and in bookstore windows, just to name two frequent out of the norm places.

For Ellison, the circumstances of a writer’s life does not matter. Writers will write no matter what is going on in their lives.

Personally, I agree with Ellison. And therefore I find the writing habits of writers, especially those of successful writers, to be a most interesting study. And an instructive one as well.

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope is my mentor when it comes to writing. He was a living example of Ellison’s Dictum.

After feeling his way into the writing business through three failed novels (and Trollope did view writing as a business), he hit upon his writing model.

Trollope’s manservant would wake him at 5 AM and provide him with a cup of coffee. (The servant was paid extra for this duty.) Trollope would go to his desk and spend a half-hour reviewing what he’d written the previous day.

After his review, he set his watch on the desk and proceed to write by hand with a dip pen one 250 word page of text every 15 minutes.

At the end of 2 1/2 hours, he put his pen aside and got ready for his workday at the post office. Another 10 pages and 2500 words of his story or novel under his belt.

Of note, Trollope kept a journal recording when he failed to meet his goal and why. He would then do his best to eliminate whatever it was that got in the way of him reaching his goal. Very instructive that.

Trollope maintained his part-time writing schedule for his entire life, even after he finally left his post office employment.

His annual word production amounted to over 760,000 words. Not too shabby for a part-time writer.

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh Cave began his writing career at the beginning of the 1930s. During that decade he sold 800 stories to pulp magazines. Which comes to 6 or 7 stories every month. And most of the stories were in the novelette word range.

That’s one heck of a lot of words.

Cave slowed down in the 1940s when he switched to writing for the higher paying slick magazines. During the 40s, he “only” sold around 350 stories. He might have written more, but he did take time off to fight a war.

Writers do indeed write.

The King of the Pulps

H. Bedford-Jones “…considered writing his profession in life, a means to be financially independent…” (King of the Pulps: The Life & Times of H. Bedford-Jones by Peter Ruber, Darrell C. Richardson, Victor A. Berch, p. 53)

To that end, in his 40 year career, Bedford-Jones wrote some 25 million words. An average of 625,000 words per year. 

Although his output was undoubtedly greater in the first two-thirds of his career, as ill health slowed down his writing greatly in the last years of his life.

Bedford-Jones kept four typewriters busy — each with a different story.

If he reached an impasse in the story he was working on (he was a pantser and made it up as he went along), he simply slid over to the next typewriter and worked on that story.

HB-J believed writers write. No time for writers block.

The Perry Mason Man

Erle Stanley Gardner, a good friend of H. Bedford-Jones, while a partner in a law firm, wrote 100,000 words a month and endured a 90% rejection rate in order to learn the craft of writing.

But Gardner persevered through the rejections until Perry Mason made him wealthy. The rejection slips were worth it.

Writers Write

I can go on, but I think you get the point. And I haven’t even touched upon the writers working today who turn out a prodigious amount of words in order to make a buck.

Ellison was right: writers write. They do so because they have to. They are compelled to do so by a force within their beings. I know, because it is true for me.

As a reader, I’m glad writers write. Very glad. Because I am assured of an endless supply of other lives and other worlds and other experiences that I may make my own.

I am grateful for writers who write and wish for them very long careers.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with two bestselling novels. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes 

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Seabury Quinn

In March of 1918 a story appeared in the pages of Detective Story Magazine and the author of the story was Seabury Quinn. The title of the story was “Demons of the Night”.

As near as we can tell, “Demons of the Night” was Quinn’s first fiction sale. That sale began a fiction writing career that spanned over half a century, and saw the production of over 500 short stories and 2 novels. And those numbers don’t include his many non-fiction writings.

Seabury Quinn was the quintessential pulp fiction master, along with such greats as H. Bedford-Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Robert E Howard. He knew how to craft a story that would sell and he wasn’t shy about going where the money was to be found.

In his day, Quinn was an exceedingly popular author. A Weird Tales poll of the magazine’s readers put Quinn as their number one favorite author — ahead of such luminaries as HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, and August Derleth. More Seabury Quinn stories received cover art than any other writer for Weird Tales. As I noted in another post, it was Quinn and his creation, Jules de Grandin, who saved Weird Tales from folding in the early ‘30s, which would have possibly denied us the best of Lovecraft’s work, and such talents as Robert Bloch.

So why is Seabury Quinn denied his claim to fame and basically relegated to a footnote? The answer lies with the politics of the Lovecraft Circle, specifically the machinations of August Derleth.

In order to elevate Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn became the whipping boy. Quinn was a hack and the epitome of what was bad in pulp magazine fiction. Lovecraft, on the other hand, was a genius and represented the highest ideals and possibilities of the pulp magazines. Derleth’s hero worship put the knife in Quinn’s back. And why Quinn, and not someone else? Probably because Lovecraft didn’t like Quinn’s fiction, making him an easy target.

For a long time I held to the common, albeit unfair, assessment that Quinn was a hack. I held that view until I actually read some of his stories. Much to my surprise, his stories are no worse than Lovecraft’s, or Howard’s, or Frank Belknap Long’s, to name three, and in some cases better.

Seabury Quinn was a decent, prolific, and inventive writer, much like Robert E Howard. Quinn was paid more than the other writers for Weird Tales because the magazine’s readers wanted his stories.

Now, thanks in large part to ebooks, publishers are republishing the work of Seabury Quinn, and I am very pleased to see him regaining the recognition he is due.

Yesterday, for Christmas, I received two volumes of Quinn’s work: Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales, edited by Gene Christie and published by Black Dog Books; and A Rival from the Grave, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume 4, edited by George A Vanderburgh and published by Nightshade Books. Santa was indeed good!

In short order, Seabury Quinn has become one of my favorite authors. His books stand right next to the works of Lovecraft and Howard. He’s easily their equal. Sure, he’s different from them. But that doesn’t make him a lesser writer. Seabury Quinn’s stories have immense entertainment value. What more can one ask from a writer?

As always, comments are welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

Anthony Trollope: The Writer’s Writer, Part 1

The Victorian writer Anthony Trollope is my writing mentor. He is the one who keeps my feet on the ground when it comes to writing and writing fads. For even though he lived in the 19th century (1815-1882), he was very much a 21st century indie author in sentiment.

In his own day, he was a popular novelist. Not on par with the likes of Dickens or Thackeray, nevertheless his name was more or less a household word. He wrote what would probably be called today slice-of-life mainstream fiction. Novels about the goings on of upper-class English society, for the most part. His books tend to be light, have plenty of humor, and a healthy dollop of social satire.

What can today’s indie authors learn from Anthony Trollope? Just about everything to guide and direct our attitude and to developing a methodology towards maintaining a writing career.

Let’s look at a few areas where I see my fellow authors struggling to come to grips with the writing life and where Trollope can teach us valuable lessons.

Quitting the Day Job

On Facebook group after Facebook group, I see my fellow writers in a frenzy to write and sell enough in order to quit the day job and write full-time. And in this frenzy they fall victim to all manner of hucksters selling (operative word here) services and advice. (NB: I don’t mean all the middlemen catering to writers are hucksters. Just remember, though, PT Barnum’s quip: a sucker is born every minute. We should strive to not be the suckers.)

Anthony Trollope, on the other hand, shows us we can write full time by writing part-time.

Anthony Trollope was a busy man. He worked full time at the post office (he invented the iconic British pillar mailbox). He was a social man. He went hunting at least twice a week, frequently played whist, visited with friends, and spent at least six weeks out of England on holiday. He was also married and had a family. He was a very busy man indeed! He did all of that and devoted three hours every day to writing, which he did in the morning before going to work.

And from those three hours each day of writing he produced a large body of work. In the course of a 35 year writing career he produced 47 novels, 44 short stories, 17 books of nonfiction, 20 articles, 2 plays, plus numerous letters.

Anthony Trollope proves one does not have to quit the day job to be a full-time writer. Because one can be a full-time writer writing only part-time.

Productivity

Go to any Facebook writer’s group and at some point a discussion will arise regarding writing speed and daily word production. One can find books on how to produce 5000 or 10,000 words a day. Of course those books are for sale, which gives us an idea as to how those authors earn their living. One of the latest fads on how to get more production is dictating one’s novel. And the fads keep on coming.

In the end, the only way to produce a high word count each day is to put your butt in your chair and write. Avoid distractions and write.

One hundred sixty years ago, Anthony Trollope showed us a very simple way to produce enough words in a year to be a prolific author. In his own day, Trollope was known as The Writing Machine.

He got up at 5:30 AM to began his three hour stint at writing. The first half-hour was spent reviewing the previous day’s work.

Then he put his watch on his desk and began writing for 2 1/2 hours. Trollope’s goal was to write one page, 250 words, every 15 minutes. At the end of his writing session, he’d have 10 pages or 2500 words.

If a writer today maintained Trollope’s pace every day for a year, he or she would have written 912,500 words. That’s very close to what Dean Wesley Smith calls “Pulp Speed” (which is writing over 1 million words per year). Those 912,500 words are enough for ten or eleven 80,000 word novels. Seriously folks, do we need to produce more than that in a year?

Trollope proves no writer needs to resort to Herculean efforts to produce a sizable body of fiction. Ten novels a year writing part-time is nothing to sneeze at.

Rewriting

Part of the key to high word counts is not rewriting and minimal editing.

Anthony Trollope did not rewrite. He also essentially did no editing. When he finished a manuscript he was for all intents and purposes finished with it. He sold it to the publisher as is. If the publisher did any editing after they got the manuscript, we don’t know. I doubt they did a lot, because mid-series in The Barchester Chronicles Trollope changed the name of one of his characters. He didn’t catch it and neither did the editor, if there was one.

As Dean Wesley Smith points out in his blog post on pulp speed writing, prolific authors don’t rewrite. They basically don’t have time to invest that much effort into any given manuscript. The prolific writer writes, it’s as simple as that. The goal isn’t perfection, the goal is production of decent and acceptable work.

I hear writers all the time talking about the number of edits they put a manuscript through, the number of beta reads, and how many professional editors they hire. Whereas, if they had gotten the manuscript right the first time they could’ve saved themselves a lot of time and money. And maybe even written another book.

Now I’m not advocating for sloppiness. I take pride in my work and while I don’t rewrite I do perform a modicum of editing. I make sure that I catch as many typos as I can and get rid of as many clunky sentences as I can. Which is basically what the pulp fiction writers did. And Anthony Trollope was setting the pattern long before the pulp fiction era.

Get in practice to write it right the first time. Academicians, who don’t make their living by writing, have spun the myth that the first draft is crap. There are scores of writers who made and make their living writing who say that advice is crap. 

Write so your story is right when it goes on paper the first time. It saves time and money in the long run and time and money equals more books, which means more money — for you.

Next week we’ll continue our look at what Anthony Trollope can teach us writers in the 21st century.

Trollope is a person who can show us how to triumph in adversity, set a dream for ourselves, and through perseverance and astute observation achieve that dream.

You can get Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography for free at Project Gutenberg. It’s a marvelous handbook for success.

As always comments are welcome, and until next time happy reading and writing!

Being Prolific

Some writers are naturally prolific and others aren’t. It is not an issue of good or bad, it just is. One of my favorite authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, sometimes has years go by before a novel comes out. But are they ever good. Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee certainly wasn’t/isn’t prolific. Yet Gone with the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird are such tours de force why write a second? Could a second be anywhere near as good?

Beginning in 1847 with his first published work, Anthony Trollope, in a span of 35 years, produced 35 novels, 2 plays, 44 short stories, and 18 volumes of sketches and non-fiction. That is nearly 3 works a year.

From 1939 until his death in 1992, Isaac Asimov wrote or edited over 500 books. That is over 9 a year. Pretty incredible.

What’s their secret?

For Trollope, it was writing 10 pages a day (2500 words). A practice Stephen King also follows. Trollope also used standard plots so he could focus on his characters.

For Asimov, it was simply to write. Leave editing to the editors, he once wrote, that’s what they’re there for. Of course, in today’s world there is no slush pile and no editors to edit. Victims of bottom lines and shrinking profit margins. Agents, beta readers, and editors for hire have taken over what the Big Publishers discarded. Nevertheless, even though the publishing world is different today than in Asimov’s day, he had a point.

Writers write and editors edit. For today’s author, who wishes to be prolific, obtaining the services of a good editor could go a long way towards obtaining that goal of prolificity.

Also key to Asimov’s tremendous output was he wrote fast in a simple and straightforward style. He focused on the story, got it on paper, and let the editor edit so he could write the next story. His stories are also rather formulaic. Writing to formula helps to eliminate plot angst.

Think about this: a 1,000 words a day (that is 4 double-spaced typed pages) will, in 50 days, produce a 50,000 word novel. At that pace, you can turn out 6 novels a year. Want a fatter novel? 75,000 words? You can still turn out 4 or 5 novels a year writing only 1,000 words a day.

Being prolific is within your grasp. 

• Write every day
• Write to a goal. At least 1,000 words a day.
• Don’t be fancy. Write simply.
• If you’re a plotter, use a formula genre plot. If you’re a pantser, keep those simple formula plots in mind to help corral your characters and keep some order.
• And let the editor edit.

Let me know what you think. Do you have any special tricks up your sleeve? If so, please share!

[Originally published 17 February 2015 on www.cwhawes.com.]

The Fabulous Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope stands as one of my favorite authors. A Victorian giant. In some ways larger than life. If one had his novels on that proverbial desert island, one would need no other entertainment.

What is it about Trollope that is so appealing? For me, it is his characters. They are real people, dealing with real life issues. Unlike Dickens, who dealt in fantasy and tear-jerker scenes, Trollope simply presented middle-class Victorian life. The few times he deviated from a middle-class setting, he did not stray from a straight forward presentation and let life itself speak.

His first novel, The MacDermotts of Ballycloran, gives us a picture of the horror that was Irish poverty with no fanfare or editorializing. How can one read The MacDermotts and not weep at the plight of the poor? The inhumanity to which they were reduced? Or read his short story “The Spotted Dog” and not be moved by the power of alcoholism to destroy lives? Or feel for Archdeacon Grantly as he wrestles with his guilt over wishing his dying father would die sooner so he’d be appointed bishop to replace his father?

These are real people with real problems drawn from Trollope’s personal observations. Nathaniel Hawthorne noted Trollope’s novels were “as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting they were being made a show of.”

Trollope loved his characters and lived with them constantly. Probably why he could write 250 words every 15 minutes, non-stop, for 2 1/2 hours every day. He was a character author and had little use for plot, other than to show off his characters. Which is another reason I so like Trollope. For me, a story is about its characters. The plot, if there is one (and I do think plot is overrated), is only there to make the characters shine -- to make them real for us.

In his personal life, Trollope was a driven man. For most of his writing career he also worked full-time at the post office. He is generally credited with inventing the British post box. He was disdained by his mother, who openly favored his brother. His mentally ill father could not support the family, which lived in near poverty. Writing was a means by which Trollope could get the attention and money he craved. And in his case, it provided him both.

Over the years, Anthony’s star has somewhat faded. Although there is a current revival of interest. I heartily encourage you to check out Mr Trollope. His Barchester novels are a good starting point.

Oh, one other thing, if you like reading or writing a series, you can thank Trollope. He invented the novel series.

[Originally published 10 February 2015 on www.cwhawes.com.]