Here's my question from the writer's block thread: why do you write quickly?

Susan May Thanks for asking that here, Jason.

Okay, so history lesson here on Susan May writing quickly ...

Five years ago when I decided I would take this writing thing seriously, I decided the only way to do it was to write every day. So I set myself the task of writing one page a day no matter what. That 250 to 300 words took me ages. I felt sweat behind my eyeballs. Maybe an hour to an hour and a half to write. I have two full finished books that will never see the light of day from those couple of years. But also about 25 short stories, some of them award winners and some yet to be published, but fully edited ready to go.

It did one important thing, it built my writing muscles and commitment. So after about 3 months I could write a little faster and I didn't have to write every day to feel the need to go back and write. Sometimes you can stop and never start again. We've all been there.

Gradually I got faster, just naturally, but I still hadn't learned how to write a novel. You learn how to do it, I believe. Then you have a belief that it is in your power to write a novel at will.

About 18 months ago I wrote a short story called Back Again for an anthology that didn't go ahead. When I had it edited, my editor told me she loved it. Then a few days later she wrote and said, "You know, I think there's a book in that story. If you write it I will send it to an agent I know."

I thought there was a book in there, too, but how do you turn a short story into a book? There were dangly bits that a short story allows you to ignore. So I told myself, you've got one month. Whatever you get in one month will tell you if you have a book. You're not allowed to waste any more time on it.

So I set up a spreadsheet to keep track so that I would know if I could reach the goal of writing a 75,000 word draft (I had 12,000 base from the original story) An aside here, the original story is in the middle of the book with bits scattered throughout. So it wasn't a matter of writing from where I'd started. I had to create a history for the characters and then go past the ending of the story to show what happened.

28 days later, I had a book. That's when I realised that books don't take years to write (not for me anyway). Of course it went through four drafts and an edit by my editor (who loved it by the way). Then a proof read. So maybe 6 edits in total. Those edits I also put into my spreadsheet, so I could see how long each edit would take and get an idea how quickly I could have a book ready for publishing. Total time was about four months.

While the book was at the editors, I thought, right, now, was that a fluke? I'd better write something quickly to see if I can do it again. Thus Deadly Messengers took 27 days to draft and that was from no planning. I just thought I want to write a bunch of mass killings from the perspective of the killers.

I'm very lucky, the stories come together. My characters are very agreeable. They tell me what to do. Then when I get stuck occasionally, the muse finds a way to get the message through. You'll have to read Deadly Messengers and my author's note at the end to discover the uncanny and very weird ways the muse works.

So now I write quickly with a system, because that's how I write. It doesn't feel tough for me to write 2000 words a day in a draft, because my mind knows that I can do it. That 2000 words probably takes 2 to 2 1/2 hours. The editing sometimes takes longer, because I have to think about things that aren't working, rework sentences and actually do some research.

I don't go back on a draft. I go forward. I bank words every day. That is my pure goal. Even if I think they are garbage. I can fix garbage. I can't fix blank pages. I've learned not to judge drafts or even second edits.

Deadly Messengers and Back Again, both of which are receiving fantastic reviews, were as far as I was concerned in 2nd edits, absolute disasters. Its in the 3rd edit that I see I might have something worthy of readers.

I believe, and Stephen King said this in Danse Macabre, a non fiction book he wrote about thirty years ago, that when you write every day you build muscles. This is true, my writing muscles are quite large these days and I exercise them constantly, every day almost. And I keep learning.

Then I do believe if you have the courage to turn up and write even when you don't want to, even when you have no story, even when you are falling asleep at the keyboard, then the muse is watching, and they decide you are worthy. Even on days when you don't feel worthy.

Here's a blog post I wrote on writing a book in 30 days. My spreadsheet is in there. You can click through to it: http://www.susanmaywriter.com/2014/11...

and here is the blog post on when I wrote Back Again the short story and how I stole time to write it in a week in between everything else that I do, including film reviews, family stuff, and speaking at a writer's festival and delivering a 3 hour seminar. Oh, and did I mention, I am superwoman, by the way. lol

http://www.susanmaywriter.com/2014/03...

If anyone is interested in how these books turned out, here is the link to Back Again: http://amzn.com/B00P10J7HG

and Deadly Messengers: http://amzn.com/B01431LVOK

Thanks, Jason for such a great question.

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