Trying to get back into the habit of writing some behind the scenes stuff to tide us over until I’m back on deck.
I’ve you’ve been following the intros and non-fiction entries in Eclectic Projects, it probably comes as no surprise that I’m interested in the pulp era of fiction writing. One of my favourite books is The Fiction Factory by John Milton Edwards, charting his career, output, and income as a writer from 1893 through to 1910. His output frequently topped one million words a year, including long stretches where he would write one or two full-fledged novellas or short novels a week, and he’s not alone in that. That kind of output reappears in countless books and biographies about pulp writers, including Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert Block, and more.
As I argue in the non-fiction article in the first eclectic projects issue, it’s easy to focus on the prodigious output of these pulp authors without putting their work in context. They were working in eras where hundreds of markets demanded work, where the publications where woodpulp that degraded quickly and backlists were hard to access. They were also being paid by the word.
In such an environment, the ability to produce a steady flow of fiction took precedence over producing something great.
On the other hand, writing 1,000,000 words a year sounds implausible and very difficult to achieve, but it largely works out at 2800 words per day done consistently for an entire year. Which is hard, yes, but not impossibly hard.
I re-read The Fiction Factory last week–it’s one of my go-to reads when I’m feeling down about writing–and I started thinking more about the logistics of writing a million words per year. Edwards advice fro the early 1900s got me back to work on a languishing novella, which I finished earlier today.
And rather than close my laptop and celebrate, I started a new document and wrote the first chapter and a half of the next novella in the series. 2800 words, in what felt like a rather horrible writing day, and it’s a pace I’ve held six days out of the last seven (where I fell short with a paltry 1500 or so).
The interesting thing about writing at this pace in the modern era is the prevalence of tools like RescueTime which allows for relative accurate tracking of how much time the actual hands on keyboard part of writing takes.
It’s faster than it feels. Looking at the stats over the past week, it’s rarely taken me more than three hours of writing to hit that number, although it’s often spread out across the day because I had a lot of resistance around the project (it’s a novella for the up-in-the-air PhD that’s at the hard bit, AKA the ending).
Part of me is noodling with the idea of trying to do a million word year in 2024 if I don’t end up finding another job. One way or another, the PhD will be cleared and finding three hours a day to hit the 2800 word quota is definitely feasible with my freelance and publishing commitments. Plus, I’ve got a few months to get the writing muscles used to working at that speed.
It’s not the most logical approach in the 21st century, for all the reasons I’ve argued elsewhere, but I can’t deny my heart sings every time I read a new pulp author biography and see the history of prodigious output laid bare. If even a quarter of what gets written is even vaguely readable, it would be one of the most productive years I’ve had as a writer in over a decade 🙂
And I’ve just sourced a copy of Frank Gruber’s The Pulp Jungle, which I’ve been aching to read for years, so I’ve got a whole new take on the pulp era to dive into.
