22 Responses to Writing Statistics

1. Daylily says:

   Thanks for the insights into your writing process! Very interesting that the NaNoWriMo challenge improved your writing speed. I should think it would be possible to do something similar in other areas of the arts . . . hmmm . . . Definitely, showing up at your workspace regularly is vital.

   Your “green office” is lovely. And you have at least three more months to enjoy it!

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   • fsdthreshold says:

     NaNoWriMo was a very dramatic experience — almost the stuff of a separate post! I finished my manuscript just at the stroke of midnight on the last night of March, 2005! It was well over 50,000 words. My personal goal was not only to reach the word total, but to finish the book (the story). I did! The result was a nice little book that I still hope will be published someday. It was the last new piece of my writing that my mom read before she passed away, and her comment was, “You’re making me start to appreciate fantasy.” (It reminded me of that Roman guy in Acts who says to — Paul? — “You persuade me almost to become a Christian!”)

     Anyway, the founder of NaNoWriMo has famously said that what stands between most people and their artistic goals is not a lack of talent — it’s the lack of a deadline. NaNoWriMo imposes that deadline. We do it in our work life (at our day jobs) all the time: we do things because we have to, by a certain day and time. In NaNoWriMo, you decide to do that with your art. Yes, it should work with any form of creative endeavor.

     In NaNo, participants attempt to escape from their internal editors, those pale and shriveled creatures who perch within us and whisper, “That’s bad! You can’t go forward yet — this isn’t perfect. Hah! You think this is good?”

     What many have discovered (including me) is that what’s written at a good clip is of just as good quality as the material we agonize over and produce at the rate of a sentence per hour. That’s not to say that it won’t need revision. But when you’ve got all your muscles trained, you’re producing good stuff; even your first draft is better than what you turn out when you’re not writing regularly.

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     • I am Mr. Brown Snowflake says:

       Uh, you want a deadline? Try having to crank out 500 words within 10 minutes and being required to produce a full 850-1000 (including relevant quotes and stats) within 40 minutes of the end of the game. That is what I must do when staffing Iowa State University football games for the AP. THAT is a deadline!

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       • Daylily says:

         Whoa! I had no idea! That’s a lot of pressure there!

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2. Preacher says:

   As you say, Fred, this is about “how one writer works.” I find it very interesting that you had less than 10 writing days each month. And apparently you only write when you can write for large blocks of time. Many of the writers I know do little sessions wherever they can. For most, it’s an hour a day. But I know one woman who writes in 8-minute segments. She can usually get a page done in 8 minutes, so even if that’s all she gets to do each day, that’s a “book” in 9 months or so. Do you write at all during the week? (I know, it’s tough after fighting with garbage all day.)

   What I’d like to see you dissect even further here is how much you “edit” as you write and how long it takes you to get a page or a scene done. I’ve always assumed your amazing descriptions and compelling characterizations just “flow” right out of you as you peck away at the keyboard. You know—that’s it’s easy for you! 🙂

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3. fsdthreshold says:

   Mr. Brown Snowflake: Yes! You’re right — my (hard)hat is off to journalists! I remember being interviewed by a newspaper editor/writer about Dragonfly, and the subject of revision came up. She sighed wistfully and said, “I wish I had time to revise!”

   Preacher, I’m very glad you raised this issue. NO writing teacher or professional writer I’ve ever heard/read recommends writing the way I do. They all, to the extent of my experience, agree with you 100%. That is, it’s much better to write even a very small amount every day than it is to rely on weekend marathon sessions. You can see what happens: on weekend days when something comes up, such as a birthday party, it knocks out an important writing day. So you’re right, right, right.

   Describing myself, I often use the metaphor of a semi truck — you know, an 18-wheeler? Once it’s rolling at speed, it’s a juggernaut, but getting up to speed takes time. You don’t go from zero to sixty in ten seconds. When I have a long holiday (which I’m not sure when I’ll have again), I can consistently write a fairly large amount every day. But it usually takes me a day or two to get into writing mode. I’ve tried, but I don’t seem to be the type of writer who can use a free half-hour well. I just can’t immerse myself in the imaginary world that quickly.

   So, yes, I am either doing a day-job day or a writing day. Over the last two months, those writing days were all Saturdays and Sundays (with the exception of a Monday when the machines broke down and I got to write instead of sort trash). I use parks and the Neo because that gets me out of my house and away from distractions. If I make the investment in time and effort to get to a park with my gear, I stay and write a significant amount. No, I haven’t been able to use evenings of workdays for writing — at least not yet. That’s when I do various housekeeping tasks, correspondence, bill-paying, cooking & eating, etc. I am making an effort to read more on weekday evenings. That way the day doesn’t go entirely to work and chores. You’re right about the nature of physical labor: when my shift is over, I need to just sit on my balcony for about an hour. But I’ve come to appreciate that time very much — the simple sensations of relaxing, admiring the green hills in the distance, breathing, drinking something cold, and enjoying the afternoon sun. The tops of my feet have gotten brown from the sun!

   As for editing . . . I’m a very contemplative writer. I wouldn’t say that I write quickly. I think for a while, write a sentence or two, think for a while, write a sentence or two . . . So what goes down onto the electronic page is in fairly good shape, though it still requires (often heavy) revision after the whole first draft is finished. I think that my system of writing slowly and writing for large blocks of time helps to make the writing more vivid and sensory, and it helps with keeping the behavior and thoughts of the characters logical and/or realistic — I’m really thinking things through as I write each scene. Again, I still make lots of changes at the second-draft stage. I add a lot, alter a lot, and cut out a lot of extra words.

   A friend recently told me she wrote 1,000 words in an hour in a coffee shop. That’s amazing to me. I use about five or six hours to write my 2-3,000 words, because I’m doing so much reflecting as I write. “Thinking,” I suppose, is really the wrong word, or not a complete enough word. I’m also feeling — being sensitive to the rhythms and diction of the language, the pacing, etc., and to the unfolding of the story. Is it unfolding as it should?

   It’s like the trash coming down the belt at work: you can’t get it all the first time. You can’t possibly grab everything that needs grabbing. Writing is like that. But I do like to get it as clean as possible when it first goes down, because that saves work later. Still, in the second-draft phase, I mark the printed pages all up, attach memos to the margins, draw arrows, etc., and key all those changes in before I let test readers see the work.

   By the way, the mortal engines at work broke down today! We all raked trash in the yard for 2.5 hours, and they turned us loose at 9:30 a.m. SCORE! And the day before the Fourth, too! (In all the years I was teaching, the classrooms never broke down; so Greenstar definitely has its qualities.) So the Neo and I have some power writing to do! 🙂

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   • Preacher says:

     Fred, I would hope that no writing teacher or professional would ever suggest that you change your writing pattern! With so many writers as friends, I’ve heard just about every schedule imaginable. One guy wrote his whole second novel on the 30-minute train ride to and from work every day. Another woman did her whole first draft in her apartment complex’s laundry room 2 nights a week. Dean Koontz claims to write one page–perfecting it to his satisfaction which may take an hour or a day–and then moving to the next page. (Talk about a clean first draft!) And then there’s the one guy I know who finished NaNoWriMo by the third day. No joke! He had over a hundred thousand words in less than a week.

     So, don’t ever change, my friend, because your writing is exceptional.

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     • fsdthreshold says:

       Thanks for the encouragement! No, no one is suggesting that I change. I’m just saying that my approach is unconventional. I could be a lot more prolific if I were able to do the 30-minutes-a-day thing or to use the 15 minutes while I’m waiting for something, etc.

       On this unexpected mostly-holiday, I got several necessary errands done and wrote 1,297 words! Today, because the weather was so iffy, I wrote at home, on my balcony, and finished up indoors on my computer.

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       • Hagiograph says:

         “I wrote at home, on my balcony, and finished up indoors on my computer”.

         Please tell me what you wrote on your balcony was transferred to paper or digital somehow. Did you use a pencil? What kind of wood is your balcony made of? Does it show the writing well? Or did you carve it in using a knife?

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   • Daylily says:

     So you’re “a very contemplative writer”; I didn’t know that! You gave us an interesting picture of how your process works. Thanks for the insight into your writing world! I can see that your style of writing requires a reasonable amount of time and space so that the story can unfold, as you said.

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   • Hagiograph says:

     I also suspect that in all your years teaching you didn’t have any given day when the highlight of the day was finding a cat-sized rat or having a 20lb disk of metal fly at your head. But then you were teaching in Japan, so things may be different there. In all my years of teaching I never had that kind of excitement. I did have a student pass out once though….apparently he hadn’t eaten that day.

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4. Hagiograph says:

   OK, ok, ok. I’m going to bore the crap out of everyone in excess of the discussion of writing statistics by actually providing statistics background!

   Clearly what Fred needs to do is (if possible) take the data he has and expand it out. Since he’s keeping track of this stuff right now it indicates he’s kept track of it in the past (hopefully has it archived somewhere). This “monthly word total” would be an easy fit into a statistics program. It is impossible right now to do this with only two months worth of data but give me the data for at least a year or two (broken down by month) and we can run the stats to see:

   1. Is there a statistical difference by month? (this would probably be done by a “chi square” type test, which would test if any given months numbers are different from another month)

   2. “Statistical modelling” of the “month” effect should there be real differences between months. In other words (especially if you have more than one year’s worth of data); “Does the month of the year affect the number of words?”

   3. Since you now have a year’s worth of data for Pittsburgh U.S. writing and you have several year’s worth of Niigata Japan writing is there a “continental” signal? Are you writing more or less now than you did in Japan?

   The key here is that you already recognize as in your post above, that small numbers of words difference don’t necessarily mean a lot, may mean nothing within statistical variability. But the great thing about oodles of data is that you can start to see if there are trends or exactly “how much is a real difference” within the noise of a few words here or there.

   This is done through the magic of the “F-Test” (and the F doesn’t stand for Fred…it stands for Fisher, a famous statistician). You can test for differences in means if you have a lot of data. Further more there’s “Tukey’s HSD” (Tukey’s “Honest Significant Difference”) test (note that’s TUKEY not TURKEY) which allows you to compare multiple means in a more robust fashion to see if they actually provide a really significant difference as opposed to what is called a “pairwise comparison” which might not give proper statistical significance.

   I will gladly offer to run the numbers if Fred gives me the data. (It will, however, have to wait until after my vacation next week in Boston where I am taking an exciting PATENT class! Wheeeeee! And believe me, if you ever want to read painful, as in eye gougingly painful writing try reading an invention disclosure written by a non-native english speaker.)

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   • I am Mr. Brown Snowflake says:

     I cannot speak for everyone else, but you certainly succeeded in boring the crap out of me …

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     • jhagman says:

       Mr. Snowflake, I think you were secretly really Fascinated by Hagiograph’s entry, and truly green with envy and JEALOUS. Now back to your football fields with 90% humidity, and Hundred degree temps, and try to write something HALF as fascinating as Hagio’s writings on statistical modelling, industrial printers, and scientific repeatability! I CHALLENGE YOU!

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   • Daylily says:

     I cannot say that I love statistics, but I did find this entry to be interesting and useful information. Say, Hagiograph, be sure to give us a sample from one of those invention disclosures you mentioned. The use of English by non-native speakers can lead to some unusual phrases, like this one which my husband and I still use from our time in Hungary, “He scorned me off.”

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5. I am Mr. Brown Snowflake says:

   uhh, summer practices cannot open yet, and I only staff home games. Of course, without the wonderful world of chemistry, there would be no ink for my stories to be printed upon, nor printers to reproduce them, etc… you see, my life is about games … lol

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6. Buurenaar says:

   This kind of stuff fascinates me, actually. Whenever I actually get to where I can write, I normally average about 1,000-1,500 words per hour with basic editing and revisions. It’s just about getting into the mentality for me, which can be quite difficult at times. When I do write, it’s exhilarating…like being on a roller coaster. I don’t think about what I’m doing; I just feel it and write what I see or know.
   I’d like to see the data, too, though I have a hunch that it’ll be fairly consistent.

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   • Buurenaar says:

     Also, I actually love football and find patents fascinating. Of course, if you saw me, you’d probably think that I was the farthest thing from a sports fan that you’ve ever laid eyes on. However, give me a bow or a pigskin….I will crush all opposition or die trying. A ballet barre works to a lesser degree, though.

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7. Tim (who's now) in England says:

   Fred,

   As I recall a curious discussion of calculus we had in the band room circa April 1984, I’m absolutely shocked to see you marshalling statistics and suggesting they might signify anything. Next you’ll be telling me that standardized test results capture something meaningful about what happens in the classroom. Oh… the humanities!

   Meanwhile, I wanted to share a thought about The Star Shard and your steady and impressive word count. I read several hundred book reports about YA novels each year, a job that’s probably not unlike your work at Greenstar in terms of salvaging the valuable bits from a sea of refuse. In reading so much writing about YA novels and not a few of the novels themselves, I’m pretty familiar with the lay of the land in YA novels.

   One of my first thoughts upon finishing TSS was that it stood a good chance of pleasing a great many of my students. This was followed almost immediately by the thought that you could really make a living if you could write a couple books of this quality per year. So now, your stats seems to indicate you’ve got the quantity aspect of the thing nailed down. Now all you need is a series of three or seven or thirteen books, and you’ll be loading up the shelves of every middle school library in the US. I look forward to reading the book reports.

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   • fsdthreshold says:

     Tim, thank you for these wonderfully kind words! This is a great encouragement to read as I head out the door for a day of sorting trash!

     The problem with the young adult world and making a living as a writer is this: the books can be of quality, but unless something Breaks Out, the books don’t get noticed, and publishers don’t take a chance on them. THE STAR SHARD is doing miserably in retail sales, which makes sense. It costs $16.99, and it’s by a writer no one has heard of. Who’s going to buy that? It’s very unlikely that the publisher is going to give me a contract for any sequels. (This is very different from the fantasy-for-grownups world, in which publishers give out multiple-book contracts from the get-go–THAT’S what I’d LOVE to land!) We’re still hoping that it’s doing better in library sales. The kids and children’s librarians who have read it have expressed enthusiasm, so it’s appealing to the right demographic. It’s just a challenge of getting it (and other books) noticed.

     It’s a Catch-22: to get noticed and catch on, something almost has to be a series. But unless it gets noticed and catches on, publishers won’t contract for a series.

     A further complication is that I write what I write, and much of my stuff isn’t for the children’s/YA market. The book I’m working on right now, for instance, is very definitely for adults.

     But anyway, I deeply, deeply appreciate your comment! I know from long experience that you’re a voracious and discerning reader, so your words mean a lot. Thank you!

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     • jhagman says:

       Hey Fred, keep your chin up! In my store your sales have equalled Tim Powers’:one copy sold. The clientele is tough out here, a lady came in and asked for dinosaur books, it turned out what she wanted was a thesaurus. You should have seen the confusion on our employee’s face.

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       • fsdthreshold says:

         Running neck and neck with Tim Powers! That is a great encouragement! 🙂 That’s an amazing story about the thesaurus lady! Did she not know what she was buying? She sounds very confused. All I can imagine is that some friend or relative of hers asked for a thesaurus as a present, and she thought, “Oh! It’s a dinosaur book.”

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