Re: JCO: Prolific

John Updike nailed this one - like JCO, he's a writer from a blue-collar
background who's often accused of writing too much. His point was, if you
treat writing as your job, and work office hours, you will inevitably
produce a lot of writing in a year.

JCO publishes one adult novel under her own name a year, which is far from
unusual. What adds to the impression of prolificity are the other things:
the short stories and their collections, the book-length novellas, not to
mention the essays, poems and plays. And add to that the other novels - the
Rosamund Smiths and Lauren Kellys, and latterly the children's and YA books.

Stephen King (in On Writing) states that he writes 2000 words a day, every
day. That would take me about three hours, assuming I'm not blocked or
distracted. (And I'm not a full-time writer so I have a day job to go to.)
It's quite feasible to do 2000 words in a morning, leaving afternoons for
other work, revision, and all the admin stuff (proof-reading etc) that we
don't think about but which has to be part of a writer's life. At 2000 words
a day, you could write an average-length novel in up to two months, and
quite a hefty novel in three. Even one the length of Blonde won't take more
than six months at that rate. So JCO's output doesn't seem that
unreasonable - what makes the difference is that she obviously has the
dedication and focus to produce the amount of words that she does. It's too
easy - I know this myself too well - to get distracted or sidetracked, or
let other things take over, and you soon start losing days when you could
have been writing.

Gary
----- Original Message -----
From: <Cyranomish@aol.com>
To: <jco@usfca.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: JCO: Prolific

> Hi, Steve.
> To some extent, it's a red-herring issue. Dedicated athletes run, swim,
> lift
> weights, etc. on a daily basis. Mystics pray day & night. Tycoons study
> the
> market every day. In order to stay at a high level of performance, a
> daily
> application is needed. And, of course, the more one does one's art, the
> more
> accomplished one becomes.
> For those of us who would like to discuss (or read about) JCO's art on
> a
> deeper level, book reviews are really not the venue. Scholarly journals,
> literary magazines and right here on this site are the best places to get
> into
> deep analysis. Book reviews are as much about marketing as anything else:
> that's why publishers send so many free books out to newspapers and
> individual
> reviewers. Many of those books wind up languishing in "slush piles" until
> the
> magazine or newspaper gives a load of them to local libraries or
> hospitals. When
> I write a standard 500-word book review: I'm directing it mainly to
> prospective readers -- to people who ordinarily don't think to pick up a
> book for their
> edification or amusement. On occasions when I've interviewed JCO, I've
> attempted to take the discussion beyond the "how do you do it?" level by
> noting
> that JCO answered that question several decades ago in Writer Magazine
> with the
> simple advice: "A writer writes." It is fascinating how much she has
> accomplished and the general public is right to admire it. No, rate of
> output
> shouldn't be treated as the explanation for why some of her works are more
> affecting
> than others. That does seem to be a cop-out that some reviewers resort
> to.
> Cyrano
>
> In a message dated 10/10/2005 5:39:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> jandsmerritt@earthlink.net writes:
>
> << Hi Cyrano:
>
> Ah, but your point about the various genres she's worked in is a valid,
> constructive observation, and worth, as you say, repeating for the benefit
> of readers new to JCO. It's different when someone starts out a review
> with
> the moral equivalent of "Ooh wow, man, look at this writing machine!
> Gross!" or even the more benign "I don't know how she does it, but she
> does!", which still implies someone abnormal, or even a sort of esthetic
> cheater, because she "shouldn't" be able to maintain a high level of
> achievment while writing a lot. After all, why shouldn't someone with a
> lot
> of talent, who loves to write and who has a somewhat driven personality,
> produce a lot of good writing?
>
> Steve >>
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