Aha!

[pameladean]

Three hundred words written; salmon baked with onions and garlic and ginger and soy sauce and olive oil, also baked sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli, for dinner; a nice visit with my mother; Toliman cossetted; more laundry done; and it is only a quarter to nine. I forgot to go for my walk, however. And it was such a nice warm day, bitter east wind or not.

The words are arriving in a disconcertingly polished state; I suppose the back of my head, not very reliable over the long run, has decided to wake up and do a spot of work. Long may it wave.

Eric called when I was actually home, too, and I feel much much happier for a conversation. He sounds beautifully relaxed, which after all is the point of a vacation.

A year ago he was in Minneapolis and we had exchanged email but had not actually seen one another yet. We would actually meet in person for the first time in about eleven years at the Minn-Stf New Year's Eve party.

Twenty years ago, David and I were on the eve of our wedding. We went with Will and Emma to Steven and Reen Brust's house to have a splendid dinner and to discuss whether the six of us might manage to put together some kind of combined household that would not drive any of us crazy. (Answer: No.) There had been a tremendous blizzard not long before, so tremendous that my great-aunts and second cousin and family had cancelled their plans to attend the wedding. The moon was near full and glittered on the heaped snow.

My first novel was at Ace, but it had not yet been bought.

I think I should write faster.

Pamela

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

you actually met eric more than eleven years ago? it sounds like there's a story there. (it may, however, want to wait until after the book is done.)

[pameladean]

Yeah, we aren't sure of the exact date, but it was in the late 1980's. The short version of the story is that he was shy and I was monogamous. But these things changed.

Pamela

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes, you ought to write faster because I want to read more of it, but quality is more important than quantity.

Congratulations on your anniversaries.

[pameladean]

Thank you! David and I are fairly pleased with ourselves today. And it's going to be a lot of fun to go to a bookstore with him and let ourselves go; it's been a long time and it was always one of our favorite vices. Dinner will be very pleasant too, since we haven't been going out much, but it's not quite so primal.

With Eric it isn't really an anniversary; it's just that the relationship is so new that thinking about a year ago today produces astonishment at how things can change.

Pamela

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy if you wrote faster, I admit, but if the Pamela-writing-ness comes slowly it's more important to accomodate it.

Someday, I will have known friends for twenty years.

[pameladean]

Jinian and Papersky, I don't really know if the slowness is necessary. I have written good work much faster, but that was almost always near the end of a book, where both deadline pressure and the weight of the previous writing added momentum. It's sometimes a bit daunting to think that after so long writing, the only thing I really know about my own process is that it is necessary to provide time and space for it to happen.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"I think I should write faster."

Doesn't everybody?

B

[pameladean]

Well, I'll allow as how there are probably not so many people who think they should write slower; fewer people than those who should write slower, anyway.

But come on, six books in twenty years? That's pathetic.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Six books in twenty years is slow, but not that slow. Even the most dedicated, professional, crank-them-out writers don't publish more than a book a year. You're only three times slower then them. I guess you have to decide if you're going to treat this as a full-time job or not.

B

[pameladean]

That's not really the issue. Between research and pondering time, it is a full-time job, barring health issues. It's the necessity of quite so much pondering time that I wonder about. Increased sitting at the keyboard, even increased writing of anything even if I think it isn't going to work, doesn't really decrease the needed pondering time. It can serve as pondering time; the jury is out, as they have been for about ten years, as to whether said sitting is a more efficient use of pondering time than cleaning the bathroom or rereading Dorothy Sayers. It (the sitting) is most useful at the start of a project or to overcome certain classes of reluctance. There are a lot of variations possible in speed of this or that, but the average is pretty consistent.

I don't know if any of that made any sense. I'm going to go make some coffee.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It does make sense. When I read about the authors who are good at churning books out regularly, they all have several projects working parallel. One is in the research stage, another is in the first draft stage, a third in the editing stage, and a fourth in the production stage...or something like that. When you're burned out on one project, or when you need more clock time to ponder an idea, you have another project to work on.

That's kind of what I mean about treating it as a job.

B

[pameladean]

Oh, that kind of treating it as a job, rather than writing eight thousand words a day steadily.

The last time I tried working on several things at a time I got stuck on all of them and two never got finished. That was certainly a long time ago, and I suppose it won't make anything worse.

Pamela

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

Long before I was a fan I attended Clarion. There were people who produced vast quantities of fiction (some of it excellent) and some that produced three stories.

The most productive - he wrote about 3 or 4 stories a week - had only one published (that I saw) after the workshop.

I've never thought of writing as a tradeoff that way. I'm looking forward to your next work.

[pameladean]

I don't ordinarily think of it that way either, but, well, I'll be fifty soon, and it is almost an even twenty years since my first novel sold. I don't have an infinite amount of time, though I suppose perhaps I could do worse than write as if I did. I don't know.

Pamela