Hi everyone. I read an interview recently with Jeannette Winterson where she claimed to work in intervals of 16 hours non-stop! Does anyone else have this kind of working schedule? Is it possible??? (just wondering whether I'm being lazy with my three hours a day!)

Hi Traveller, I think that your three hours writing a day on top of a demanding full time job is pretty impressive. I've never written for more than six hours in a day - any more than that and I think my brain would ignite!

Adele.

I've been writing for the last fifteen years (full time) and have got to the point where I can write- as in create, not tinker, edit, etc, but the first draft writing- for about ten hours a day if everything else is relatively calm- ie. not moving house or having other things that are major distractions. But this might be because I always have about 4 projects/commissions on the go at any one time- we poor playwrights, you see, have to. You have to build up to it- about ten years ago, I'd write for an hour and feel like I needed a break. Some very well known writers write for a couple of hours a day and the rest is thinking or contemplation time; horses for courses.

Anna, I am also the same. I lose myself in a story and it just sweeps time away. At other times, I can barely be assed to lift my fingers to the keyboard, but I try to write at least 3000 words a week. If I fall below this limit, I feel like I'm wasting time as I feel I have a lot of ideas and a lot of stories to tell.

JB x

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I'm lucky enough to have a 36 hour a week job running an internet cafe. It never gets that busy until after six pm so there is plenty of time to read other people's posted stories on the net and also to write.

Combining my hobby with earning some filthy lucre is a big plus right now and I reccommend it to any writer. Basically, get a job where you don't have to do much, and you can concentrate on the real work - spinning yarns!

Good point- the problem comes if you have a day/full time job where your brain is engaged or you get too stressed, and finding the creative energy to write is then a real chore I guess.. my biggest problem with putting the hours in at the moment is when my eyes start to cross because I haven't been taking enough breaks from the screen. And I do believe Jeanette Winterson's claim- she's one of those incredibly intense writers and you can easily imagine her glued to whatever she's writing for that length of time. Although I do think that after a few hours, you need to re-energise or you get a bit stir-crazy.... particularly in this heat.

Who was it who said ‘In the morning I inserted a comma, and in the afternoon I took it out again’?

My current full-time job is not difficult but it is demanding and often stressful. When I get home the first thing I do is switch on my laptop. I check my emails, check WW and I write until bedtime. For me it’s a wonderful way to unwind. At weekends I get up in the morning, switch on my laptop… and I’m there for the day. I’ve pared down everything else to research trips and visits to bookshops.

When I’m starting a new novel, in that wonderful spew-writing stage when your fingers can’t go fast enough for your brain, I think the most I’ve written in one day was 3000 words. I wish I could make a decision to, for instance, write for three hours and then do something else but I can’t. When I’ve got an idea in my head I have to get it written down because I’m terrified I’ll forget it. I have been known to jump out of the shower with my hair full of shampoo because I HAD to write something down before I lost it.

On the flip side, when I’m editing, I often feel I’ve ‘unwritten’ more than I’ve written. But it’s still part of the process. I enjoy editing, combing out the loose bits. I just wish I could write full-time…

Dee

Apparently, L Ron Hubbard wrote his Dianetics in one month. It's over 100,000 words! The story goes that he approached a publsiher with the idea, and the publisher basically said that if he could have a first draft on his desk within the month, he'd publish it!

This was back in the sixties. I can't see the same thing happening now, but all the same, it's a pretty mad feat!

JB

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Oh, and for the record, it was Oscar Wilde who said that Dee :)

Now that guy must've been on some serious amphetamines!!! I know Kerouac wrote On the Road in a fortnight while on benzedrine (younger readers - this is not to advocate the use of narcotics!! drugs are bad things that make you turn evil etc)

It would have been all the harder to turn that amount of work out in the sixties. It would had to have been done on a typewriter (remember those things? RSI Heaven) and there'd have been no deleted, cut and copy or solatair game.

Must have been hell.

Colin M

Yeah. I'm not really into that L Ron Hubbard stuff (he has written a couple of brilliant sci-fi books though) but I read a brief book about how he made it as a writer and it was fascinating.

He basically reckoned you had to turn yourself into a 'manuscript factory', and in his lifetime, churned out more words than a lot of his other contempories.

He wrote widely across genres for those old magazines in ther 50's. He wrote detective, adventure, science fiction -you name it, and then he worked out an equation to see which of his 'theme' stories sold the most and generated the most interest. Of course, it was sci-fi, so he ditched the other genres and focused on that.

Eventually he became one of the award winning stalwarts of the sci-fi Golden Age, with hits such as Battlefield Earth, Fear, and The Invader's Plan series, as well as the multi million selling Dianetics.

So now you know

JB

Hubbard's dodgy religion, Scientology, is well dubious and cons people out of money all around the world.

I've read that Dianetics bollocks (the bits I could stomach and didn't make me want to chuck it against the wall screaming "you f@#!ing bastards!") and it is the most hideous load of claptrap I have ever read, due to the fact that people

a) Believe it

and

b) Put all their money into it, send their kids to be missionaries and generally sppout meaningless crap as if its the truth. While I know it is totally fair enough that people believe what they want, and Hubbard's mob are entitled to do that, it just winds me up.

Families put all their money, time and resources, and even their kids into this American monstrosity of a religion.

Many would argue that it's no different to other major religions, but it is about as Ancient as Tony Adams (literally) and cons people out of cash. It spews a dodgy doctrine as if it is truth. It is a load of science fiction presented as fact. Hubbard made shed loads of cash out of it, and bloody John Travolta made rubbish films about it.

Sorry about the rant, but Scientology really winds me up. I know from discussions with Scientologist kids its not that evil or bad, and if you take it with a pinch of salt it lends to a "sound" (in some's eyes) moral background ("Stops you from doing drugs, man!" - yeah, cheers...) or whatever.

And they are really "nice" people, on the plus side...(fixed smiles and creepily friendly in a "come in an' siddown while I brainwash you" type way).

Then so are Mormons...

They're all a bunch of Cults if you ask me.

regards


Dav

um...my parents are scientologists, Davey, and I actually went to one of those 'dodgy' schools you're talking about.

Before you ask, no, I am expressly not a scientologist, but I was brought up around their doctrines, and my own personal views are slightly coloured by the fact my dad and stepmother are still very much into it.

I'm not offended by your view, as it is common. My own belief is that people can believe what they want to believe. That's what freedom of speech is all about.

I am not brainwashed, neither am I scarred by my experiences. I am a well adjusted, rational individual given to moments of complete and utter madness

JB

Ezy waxy

I hope I didn't offend you, but still would have said it if I'd known (not to offend you, and probably without the bunch of cults bit but I couldn't resist the gag, but you get what I mean). I just have my own personal experiences with scientologists!

Hey, if I'm out of line and just being an ignoramous please put me back on track! That whole serene calm and power of healing thing freaks me out. Like I say, the peeps (kids mainly) I met were really nice people, I just felt, I dunno, a bit sorry for them. Its probably an inflated opinion of my self and my own comfortable upbringing, and a false sense of "thank God I'm free to do what I want".

But I do tend to ramble off on one, and don't want to be seen as WW's answer to Kilroy-Silk, so please forgive any offensive inaccuracies.

Soz mate, and here's hoping Ron won't judge me too harshly

Dav

I came across an anecdote a short while ago on Joyce. Went along the lines of:

Joyce seemed despondent after a day of writing, so one of his friends asked him, "How much did you get done today, James?" "Eight words," Joyce said. "Well," his friend said. "Eight words. That's not bad, for you." "Yes," Joyce replied, "But I don't know what order they go in!"

I am easy dayey well, maybe not that easy! It's cool tho, you're entitled to you opinion.

JB x