When I started writing full time, the received wisdom was, that if you wanted to be successful, you should write one thousand words a day. 

I had, and still have, a problem with that: was it one thousand words of sketches and notes? a rough draft? a polished draft? If I wrote one thousand words of first draft and, the next day, revised and corrected it, did that count? If I cut and tightened it so that it became only eight hundred words, did that mean I had done minus two hundred words? The dictum was never really explained.

I don’t know how long it took Thomas Wolfe to write Look Homeward Angel, but according to the biography of Maxwell Perkins, who was Wolfe’s editor, it took Perkins five years of working with Wolfe to get it into publishable shape. I don’t know how many words that comes down to from start to finish, but it is not a thousand a day. Even without all that editing.

Ernest Hemingway edited his own work extensively before submitting it, polishing his style to be exactly the way he wanted it to be. 

I don’t know how long it took Margaret Mitchel to write Gone With the Wind, but I’m sure she didn’t just dash it off at a thousand words a day. 

It took Truman Capote about five years to research In Cold Blood. 

Tolkien took sixteen years to write The Lord of the Rings. 

So much for a thousand words a day.

I have written a thousand words a day, but they were first draft. I wrote Planet Masters, 75,000 words, in eight and a half days, nearly ten thousand words a day. I also did sketches, maps, characters, created the world’s complex culture. Then revisions, corrections, and responding to my editor’s comments. I wrote The Pursuit of Diana in fifteen days, because I had to. Plus dealing with my editor’s comments. 

But I still wonder sometimes, am I taking too long with Star Kings? Aside from the years between when I started it and when I picked it up again.

I finished what I call a good third draft of Star Kings, and read aloud for text, and finished, after thirteen months, on September 9, 2022, when I took a “much needed break.” I got back to Star Kings on October 20, read it aloud again, and now I’m working on reading for story, that is, does it flow? does it make sense? is there anything which might kick a reader out of the story? 

Yes, there is. There are continuity problems, such as when a description of something in one place is different from what it is in another. There were several paragraphs where the text was fine, but I had no idea what I had been talking about, what it meant. That took almost two hours to fix. If I hadn’t fixed it, someone else might just have stopped reading. 

And because of the length and complexity of the story, about 136,000 words at this point, I decided to create an appendix for a list of characters, instead of having to remind the reader if that character hadn’t shown up for a while. 

My viewpoint character interacts with many peoples who aren’t human in any way. They have their own home worlds, biologies, physiologies, and so on. So I am adding an appendix describing each of them, so that, for example, when I mention the Mroghan people, say eleven chapters after the last time, I don’t have to describe them again. 

And there are lots of terms, the meanings of which are clear in the context of the story, but when they are used many chapters later the reader might forget. 

For example, when I wrote Stroad’s Cross, which took place in 1958, I didn’t have to put in a description or explanation of what a “stick shift” was. I’m sure there are people today who have no idea. In Star Kings, a reader might not remember what I meant by “tablet” when I use it so infrequently. My characters would just know that, and would not have to remind themselves.

Doing all this takes time, and I have only three or four good creative hours a day. But it still nags at me, am I taking too long, am I being too careful?

After re-reading my first paragraphs, maybe not. And besides, the standards which I have set for myself have become higher than they were even ten years ago. 

I do not judge other writers by the standards I have set — or am setting — for myself. Every writer is different, so that is not really possible anyway.

It is that, as I have grown as a writer (storyteller), I have become more aware of my weaknesses and faults, and I am no longer content to say, “well, it’s good enough,” when I can in fact do better if I just try. Which takes time, and energy, which is in ever diminishing supply. And there’s no way I could write one thousand finished words a day.