So I'm trying this national-novel-writing-month thing. A novel of at least 50,000 words in one month.
If it is not completely **** at least you'll have a skeleton on which you can pile some flesh. Or so it goes ...

Anyone ever heard of someone writing a novel in less than a month that they eventually published to acclaim?

Does speed necessarily mean that one gives up on quality or can some writers keep the pace and churn out an award winning book in no time at all?

Mark

I think the idea is that it allows you to feel the experience the other extreme, and see if that allows a more creative flow. From that you can get a better idea of where your natural balance lies. I've never done NaNoWriMo, but I've tried the attitude several times and the results have been fairly surprising. I still tend to rework and edit as I go along, but I do try my best to get that first draft out fast, rather than perfect.

Colin M

I've never tried it either, but limits - of time, form, language - can have interestingly disinhibiting effects, because your eye is taken off judging your work, and fixed on the clock, and what there is in you comes out uninhibited by your inner critic. It's a kind of letting-go-of-outcomes thing.

Emma

Like a GCSE English Exam

I think Stephen King was supposed to have written “The Running Man” in a week.

Grinder

A week's remarkable, though I can't say Stephen King would ever be my model for any aspect of writing, and I bet someone else was doing the cooking, cleaning, washing-up...

But I do think it depends what you mean by 'write'. I 'wrote' a 140,000 novel in three months, including running a house and two children. But it was another year of typing up and re-writing and revising and polishing before I could honestly say it was finished. So how long did it take me? 3 months, or 15?

Emma

I've just a quick peek at "On Writing" by Stephen King (still one of the best books on the subject of writing that I've read), and found a chunk where he says that his regular schedule is to knock out 2000 words a day. He starts in the morning and finishes at dinner time. Over a three month period this equates to 180,000 words, which is the average size of a Stephen King novel. This is his model for saying it should take no longer than three months to write a novel. Which is a bit hard on those who can only manage their time to find an hour every other day.

Never heard the Running Man story before - that's insanely fast, but I did hear that he completed the Shining in a month.

Colin

I wish I could find the time to get close to 2000 words a day, but I suppose when your books have sold miliions of copies worldwide, then you probably have loads of time on your hands...

It's funny but The Running Man is about the only Stephen King book I've read. As far as I remember, (it was a long time ago) it is a novella and was one of four stories in a volume. It is the story of a gameshow which people enter voluntarily and are hunted down and so have to run to escape as long as they can. If they manage to get to the end of the show without being killed they earn big prize-money. The Long Walk was in the same collection and was the one I liked best. I thought that they were very interesting reflections on our modern society and the lengths we are prepared to go to for entertainment. In the light of reality shows, ahead of their time really.
I have to admire Stephen King's skill at narrative draw. His style may lack the finesse of more literary writers but his stories have a powerful under-water current that captures his readers.

Ashlinn

PS Like you, Colin, I enjoyed his 'On Writing' book very much. Full of common sense.