More, more, more! Faster, faster, faster!

Some of you probably read the NY Times article last weekend called Writer’s Cramp: In the E-Reader Era, a Book a Year Is Slacking.

Here is the gist of it, before I add my two cents’ worth.

Authors on Assembly Lines

Apparently authors are being pushed, prodded, and persuaded to write more books per year, plus short e-stories in between books to promote upcoming books. One popular author, James Patterson, writes twelve or thirteen novels per year! He writes some and co-writes some. Here are some quotes from that article:

“Authors are now pulling the literary equivalent of a double shift, churning out short stories, novellas or even an extra full-length book each year… The push for more material comes as publishers and booksellers are desperately looking for ways to hold onto readers being lured by other forms of entertainment, much of it available nonstop and almost instantaneously… Ms. Scottoline [a thriller writer] has increased her output from one book a year to two, which she accomplishes with a brutal writing schedule: 2,000 words a day, seven days a week.”

Bear this in mind: that’s 2,000 words per day in addition to all the promoting, travel, speaking, and social networking required. One author (who has to write short stories between his novels for his publisher to sell cheaply or give away) said this: “It does sap away some of your energy. You don’t ever want to get into a situation where your worth is being judged by the amount of your productivity.”

But isn’t that exactly what is being done here?

From Quality to Quantity

If this is the future of publishing, can the quality of writing go anywhere but down? We see this all the time.

A debut novel is a hit, often an award-winner. The new author explains that it took 5-10 years to write and revise. The author’s new agent and publisher want another novel from this author RIGHT NOW–while she’s still hot property.

Is it any wonder that often subsequent books are of inferior quality? [I'm not picking on anyone here. I've written series with very short deadlines, and you just can't write with the same quality when you only have six weeks to do a whole book. There is no down time, no extra think time, and little revision time.]

Great Books Take Time

Oddly enough, just before the NY Times article came out, I was re-reading Chapter After Chapter: Discover the dedication & focus you need to write the book of your dreams by Heather Sellers. In one of her chapters, she discussed how writing needed to be slow. Does this resonate with you?

“Writing books is, and should be, really slow. The great books are still around–just like the great recipes, the great songs, the great trees–because they took a long