One of the most-repeated pieces of advice I keep hearing from other self-publishers is to write fast. Put out a lot of content in a short amount of time. Get a book released every other month. Go! Faster! FASTER!!
I just can’t do it.
It’s not so much that I’m worried about putting out a perfect book — I do understand well the folly of trying for that non-existent prize — but I don’t want to crank out garbage.
I can get an outline done in an afternoon. Get it polished up and feeling good in another. With an outline, it’s much easier for me to write faster. A chapter a day, pretty easy. If I’m feeling it, two chapters. Sure. 30-50 chapters, depending on length of each, and you’ve got book. I can read through a book and make edits in about two weeks. So that’s about 6-8 weeks from conception to finished book.
I refuse.
My main objection: A book needs more than one edit before it’s worth putting before the public. I’m finding 4 is about right for my work, and then I hand it to beta readers and make one more pass based on their suggestions, and usually tidy up a few more loose ends of my own while I do. If there are a lot of suggestions, or major ones, I’ll make the edits, then make yet one more pass through. I am on my 3rd book ever, though, so maybe it’ll tighten up as I go. But I just plain can’t believe that good work can be cranked out super quickly.
The reply I’ve heard to that objection: “readers are a hell of a lot more forgiving than you’d think.”
In essence, the people reading your books don’t care about plot flaws, character inconsistencies, misspelled words, and time jumps anywhere near as much as you think. The evidence, often presented? “50 Shades of Grey was an awful book, but it sold like crazy.”
The key word in that sentence to my mind: “SOLD.”
That book has gained a reputation as a terrible book. Poorly written, terribly plotted, basically junk. How much is that author ever going to sell again? Maybe she doesn’t ever need to write anything else after such a flaming success, but that’s not my goal as a writer. I don’t want to have a one-hit wonder and flame out. I want to be writing and loved and read for the rest of my life. I want my books to outlast me, even if just for a little while, and I want people to contact me and tell me they just discovered my books for the first time when I am 90 years old.
I probably can’t build a career in a few years doing that, and I probably won’t make a ton of cash really quickly. And while I do want to make a career out of writing books, nothing in my life has ever been about the money. I need enough to live on, I’d like to be able to travel a little, and fix up my very old house bit by bit, and buy groceries and cat food. I’m not after more and more and more.
My only worry: can I even build a career so slowly? If my books are good, but people have to wait a year for new ones, is that going to shoot me in the foot? I am working on getting to a two-books-a-year schedule. I think I can manage something like that and maintain it. More than that? No way, brother.
I’m going to guess I can still do it. Authors have been building up readership one book at a time for centuries. Just because you can build a readership in six months by putting out 3 books doesn’t mean it can’t be done any other way.
And it doesn’t mean that you’re putting out good books, or that you’ll keep that readership.
I for one, don’t think I could keep up that pace indefinitely, either. Because I’m capable of putting out a book in 8 weeks doesn’t mean I can keep doing that and not fry myself. I want to be doing this — and still loving it — for the rest of my life. If I get readers expecting a book every other month, and then I burn out, then what? Does my career crash and burn and vanish too? Something to consider.
I’m going with Aesop on this one, and time will tell if I’m right or not.
Slow and steady wins the race.
