Quest For Efficient Writing

One of the more interesting aspects of novel writing is discovering what works for you. My first novel, The Crying of Ross 128, took about 2.5 months to write the first draft. The next two books in the trilogy took much longer, probably because i was trying too hard and shackling the muse in the process. The Quantum Awakening, coming out in April, took less time for the first draft as I learned to write more efficiently in sprints.

Each of us is different. Some write slowly; others quickly. Some writer better prose in the first draft; others focus on getting the story out and fixing it up later.

The key to efficient writing is finding what works best for you. By efficient I mean getting words down while maintaining the bones of a good story so that you can minimize the heavy revisions later.

Efficient, and effective. That's the goal. For me, I'm now able to write 5,000 good words per day. Yes, there is still revising and editing to perform, but the quality of the initial writing is improving. That didn't happen quickly. That's come about after writing over half a million words in novels. No short cuts.

Perhaps, then, rather than comparing our writing with someone else's, we focus on what we can do where we are, knowing that with more experience and persistence, we'll develop into efficient writers too.