I don't normally do middle-of-the-year updates, but this year has seen some changes in both my writing and my reading so I thought I'd mention them.
Halfway through the year, I'm on a pace to write about 900,000 words in 2019. If that holds, my million-words-a-year streak will end at 14. I'm actually all right with that, since I never intended to continue it for this long, anyway. I've already started talking with my editor about my contracts for next year, and it looks like I'll have about 750,000 words to write. Maybe a little more. I maintained that pace for years before I started hitting a million, and I'm confident I can continue at that rate for a good while yet. That's still pretty productive.
Now, it's possible I'll have a good second half and get the million words for this year anyway. We'll see. As long as I'm having fun and turning out good books, I don't care either way, but I'll admit, I've enjoyed being a million-word-a-year guy like the old pulpsters.
In 1980, I started keeping a list of every book I read each year. All those lists from before 2008 were lost in the fire, but I still remember my high and low totals. The most books I read in a year was 184. The fewest, 106. As of right now, I've read 50 books this year. So again, I'm right there in that area where I might not meet an established standard. Or maybe I will. I'd like to read at least 100 books, even if I can't get to 106.
All this is entirely arbitrary and trivial, of course. Utterly meaningless. Probably just a sympton of low-level OCD. But I like lists and keeping track of stuff.
This has been an unusual year in real life, what with Sammy's medical problems (he's doing quite well, by the way), the roof damage, the hassles with the insurance company, finally getting the new roof on, and numerous other time-sucks. But in the past couple of months, my writing seems to be back on track for the most part. Dealing with real life is just part of, well, life.
I have plans for the next year and a half that I'm looking forward to. We'll see what happens.
5 comments:
Your writing is always a marvel to me, both numbers and content. I keep lists of books I read, and my goal every year is 104, two per week. Most years I make that, though this year I'm not yet halfway there, so I also may have an off year. But I'm enjoying what I read, and the other things I do, and that makes me happy.
The older I get, Rick, the more I realize that's the key: to the extent possible, we should do the things that make us happy.
my book OCD is a bit above the "low level."
I wonder what the typical "per word" payment was for those old million-annual-words pulpsters. Probably it was not very high. At half a cent per word, a million words would have netted $5000, which might have been a pretty decent income back in 1925. But maybe they weren't even getting that much?
I think most of the really prolific pulpsters were getting at least a penny a word, probably more than that. I'm sure Frederick Faust, H. Bedford-Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, and probably Arthur J. Burks were making more than a penny a word. Faust made enough from his writing to afford a villa in Italy. (Some of that may have been movie money, though.) An income of $10,000 to $15,000 during the Thirties would have been great money.
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