Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Herley
Ben, I read J A Konrath's post and he makes it clear that he owes his success to having started in print. He also says he can write four books a year, which does make me wonder about the quality (I've never read him).
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I know quite a few authors capable of producing 500,000 words/year, split up into several novels. And a ridiculous number capable of producing 250,000 words per year. No idea how big he is considering a book to be, but four 50- to 100k-word novels is not an extreme claim for quality writing.
This is especially true of writing on a single theme--he writes crime thrillers, I think? Once the author knows the basics of the genre, there's not a lot of time lost in detail-checking or timeline fixing. Character-driven, emotionally-intense genre fiction can be quick to write, and it often has large sections that don't need any kind of fact-checking. (Oh look, 4,000 words of introspective angst. Which may be very compelling to the reader--but doesn't require the writer to do any research, and doesn't add any plot details, and doesn't require POV shift considerations.)
I don't know his writing and don't know if this applies to it. Just saying--genre writing can be quick for some authors, without indicating low quality.