Writer’s Digest

Taking issue (respectfully) with Stephen King Rule #10

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Writer’s Digest’s Chuck Sambuchino (follow him on Twitter if you aren’t—go now!) tweeted an Open Culture piece chronicling Stephen King’s 20 rules for writers.

(Oh, follow Stephen, too!)

Many of you have seen them. Some (like me) might be seeing them for the first time. And while I agree with most of them, one rule stands out as a tad unrealistic for the Joe Lunchbox writer:

10. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”

(Insert sound of record player needle abruptly scratching black plastic.)

Three months?

(I can think of one author who’s able to write one in even less time: James Patterson’s Rule #1 for Writing: The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three seconds, the length of time since the debut of the latest Alex Cross novel. Hah!)

Here’s where Stephen King and I part ways. Do you think it took Stephen three months to write the first draft of The Stand? Maybe it did. I’m assuming Stephen, at that point in his career, had nice advances and steady royalties and could devote himself to full-time writing.

And good for him! Most of us strive for that. I know I do.

But a sizeable chunk of us have full-time jobs and we write before work. Then we pick up our toddler from day care after work, make his dinner while he insists on watching Frozen for the 187th time (sorry, that’s my wife watching Frozen; my boy likes Monsters University), entertain him for three or four hours (which seem like 10 hours some nights) until his bedtime. We try to adhere to Rule #7 and read. And then we squeeze in more writing. And we’re tired at that point but we write anyway, not because we have to, but because we enjoy it.

Let’s look at it mathematically: Writer X types 2,000 words a day. Let’s multiply 2,000 by 30 (days in a month). That’s 60,000 words for an entire month of nonstop writing. Multiply that by three months (I’m actually using a calculator even though I really should be able to do this in my head; I am not kidding) and you get 180,000 words.

Do you know how many pages that is?

Neither do I. Give me a second to figure it out. (Let’s assume that 90,000 words is 300 pages. Now, 90,000 multiplied by 2 equals 180,000 words, or 600 pages.)

Hang on! Famed physicist Stephen Hawking just emailed me this equation to get a better idea!

GIVEN: X = 2,000 words, Y = 30 days, Z = 3 months, C ≠ 90ª

SOLVE: X² • Y(30+π) ³ ÷ Z¾ • (c‰ + ♣) = Pages

What the hell is this?!

Let’s go with 600 pages for the sake of simplicity. We all have days when we exceed our word count, and days when we don’t. But even so, according to the never-wrong Wikipedia, the orignal printing of The Stand was 823 pages. I doubt Stephen wrote every single day over a three-month span to reach that page count. If he did, great! In no way am I trying to besmirch a writer who we all admire and hope to meet one day without the police being called to escort us off his property.

Three months isn’t enough time for some of us. I find it takes around five months for that first draft of a 300-page book. It might take you a few months longer. And if it takes you three months? Awesome!

Certainly if you’re committed to a project it will get done in a reasonable amount of time. But that time will vary depending on life’s circumstances.

So, am I off base? Or is three months realistic turnaround time for a writer with a fulltime job and typical adult responsibilities? How long does it take you?

Thanks, Brian Keene, for unordinary reasons

Chuck Sambuchino, an editor and published author with Writer’s Digest, kindly posted on his blog a column I wrote chronicling my path (which I’ve yet to complete) to publication.

I couldn’t get into much detail involving the collapse of Dorchester Publishing but want to call attention to it here. This was my baptism-by-fire introduction to the publishing world. A first book deal in April 2010. Destruction of said deal in September 2010. Six months that began with jubilance and ended in misery.

Established Dorchester writers were never paid the thousands of dollars in royalty payments owed to them. Not only that, their contracted literary rights were in limbo. All things considered, I didn’t make out badly: I withdrew my manuscript and had my rights reverted to me over lack of payment. Others had to endure bankruptcy hearings and, eventually, if they didn’t get their rights back, Amazon offered to buy some of them. It was a mess.

There’s no way I can even begin to describe the crap at Dorchester without mentioning a particular writer who was royally screwed by them and painstakingly chronicled this royal screwing throughout the entirety of the screwing.

Courtesy: kobowritinglife.files.wordpress.com

Courtesy: kobowritinglife.files.wordpress.com

Brian Keene is famous in the horror genre and will take his place among the greats next month during the World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Keene will receive the 2014 World Horror Grand Master Award.

Now, I have no idea what winning the Grand Master Award entails. Getting a hamburger carton that keeps the hot side hot and the cool side cool? A zombie chewing your face during a special guest appearance on The Walking Dead? A healthcare plan with affordable monthly premiums and a low deductible? (Probably not–especially the latter.) But as our brilliant vice president of the United States would say, “This is a big f*cking deal.”

And it is.

Who else has won this award? Think of the biggest names–I mean the most-recognized names in horror and its sub-genres. The people who made you want to write. Got a name? Yes, he/she has won it. (Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Anne Rice, the list goes on.)

I congratulate Brian at the start of my career and hope to meet and thank him next year if he attends WHC 2015 in Atlanta. (I hope to go.)

Why thank him? Entertainment from his books is the easy answer, but that’s not my primary reason. Brian, sometimes very passionately with his frustration laid bare for all to read, continually updated me and the world about Dorchester’s activities on his blog. Please, follow this link and set aside a good block of time to read about what he and other authors endured. No other source provided the detailed information that Brian did. He was one of the first people I began following on Twitter. (AHEM!)

Brian likely didn’t realize at the time of his Dorchester blogging what kind of crash course he was teaching me involving the seedy side of the publishing world. I know it’s out there now, and am constantly wary of it. It’s a lesson I wish I didn’t have to learn but am glad I did early because it made me stronger as a person, and more determined as a writer.

So, thank you, Brian. I do hope to meet you down the road to shoot the sh*t. In the meantime, have a blast next month taking your place among that most horrific of pantheons.