Have you ever had a point where you were drawn to reread?

[barryem]

Yesterday I was between books and undecided whether to read a new book I recently bought or re-read Maugham's "Cakes and Ale", which I read probably 15 years ago. I have very little memory of it but I do remember thinking at the time it was the best of the Maugham books I've read, and I've read and loved a bunch of them.

Anyway thinking about this thread helped me decide and I began reading "Cakes and Ale" and it's just like a new book. I thought I had some memory of what it was about but now, about 15% of the way into it there's nothing at all familiar about it. I just might get to experience it for the first time all over again. I hope it's as good as the earlier me remembers it being.

Anyway, thanks for pushing me into this. It's fun so far!

Barry

[Sweetpea]

I'll re-read when I want to re-read. This can happen because I hear a certain song which reminds me of a book, or if I have a conversation with somebody which reminds me, or simply because I want to read something I know I'll like.

Even if I can dream some books, I'll still keep on reading them. Most of books of James Clavell, The Count of Monte Christo, all books by Thea Beckman, some series by Anne McCaffrey... I just love some books too much to never look back at them...

[Luffy]

Yesterday I was drawn to a cozy mystery book that I had read. But then the current books I'm reading became very interesting. So I shelved my intent to reread. This rarely happens with me. I've been toning down my reading priorities because of diminishing returns, and then I discover a book that has promise. Yet, I'm going to make of reading, a luxury instead of a commitment. I'll never read 100 books a year again.

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by Apache

I reread as many books as I read new books.
Apache

ME 2

[mbkimberley]

Originally Posted by Apache

I reread as many books as I read new books.
Apache

me too

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

How can you reread Mercedes Lackey every year?

I've had the chance to get some of her books cheaply a few years ago, but looking through her bibliography, she seems to write a book every other month, so I declined to get them.

Look at this

A huge number of books have a "with <writer name>" prefix. I wouldn't be surprised if these people are doing most of the writing.

Another writer I've seen who does this is James Patterson, and I won't be surprised if writers such as Daniëlle Steel do the same. Daniëlle Steel "writes" 4 books a year, and has 6 to be written and published in 2016. That's impossible. Nobody can write that much and that fast.

It could even be possible that there are a number of people writing, all under the same name, with the original author just as some sort of supervisor.

I had a whole long rant in response to this but instead I'm just going to lay out some facts as to how wrong wrong wrong you are about how "impossible" it is for an author to be so prolific without lying about it.

Isaac Asimov - 506 published works
Dame Barbara Cartland - 722 published novels - current Guiness World Record holder
Alexandre Dumas - 277 published works
Nora Roberts aka JD Robb - 200+ published novels
RL Stine - 300+ published novels

source

As to Mercedes Lackey - 64 of the 119 novels listed on that page were written solely by her. The entire Valdemar series with the exception of the Mage Wars trilogy was written solely by her. The Mage War trilogy was co-written with her husband.

[Katsunami]

So... then please explain to me how someone can write like 500 or even 700+ novels _all by themselves, in one lifetime? I don't see it. Let's just pick some numbers.

- The author reaches the age of 85, in perfect health.
- The author starts writing at age 15.

This is 70 years of writing, or 3.640 weeks.

To be able to write 500 books, one would need to write a book every 7 weeks, 2 days, their entire life, without ever stopping. To write 700 books, you only have 5 weeks, 2 days to write every book. "Works" don't count; those could be short stories of only 5 or 10 pages. A good author can write one or two each week, so writing a hundred a year is possible. I'm talking about full length books here.

Mercedes Lackey was born in 1950, and is now 65 years old. The oldest work (short story) is "Sword-sworn", published in 1985. At that point she was 35 years old. Therefore she has been publishing books for 30 years, or 1560 weeks.

If she wrote 64 books by herself, she only has about 24 weeks, or less than half a year to write those. She has to do some work for the other 55 novels as well.

So while it is technically feasible, I don't think anyone can keep up a pace like that for 30 years without ever stopping; let alone a pace 5 times as fast for 70 years.

[issybird]

IIRC, Barbara Cartland dictated her (quite short) novels, start to finish, no revisions. Next!

I don't question the rate of output as much as I question the quality. Even Dumas and Asimov had to be generating a lot of clinkers amid the gems.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by issybird

IIRC, Barbara Cartland dictated her (quite short) novels, start to finish, no revisions. Next!

I don't question the rate of output as much as I question the quality. Even Dumas and Asimov had to be generating a lot of clinkers amid the gems.

Indeed; producing 12 novels a year is entirely possible, if you just dictate a book, don't do anything else, and just start the next one. Then you could write books as fast as you can speak.

But the quality... will probably be non-existent.

[Luffy]

Has anybody here has tried to write a book or a fan fic?

[Katsunami]

Not a book, but I did write some short stories (and one on Mobileread, last year), and a lot of photography tutorials a few years ago. Writing takes a HUGE amount of time to get it right. Even when writing stuff you know a lot about (in my case, photography), it's nearly impossible to just write and be done with it.

[BookJunkieLI]

I write fanfiction. I have also written a full length novel. I know a number of writers - both fanfiction and professional.

Most full-time writers, with no other job, average at least 5 to 10k words a day 5 days a week unless they're working heavily on revisions or plotting.
Most part-time writers, working part-time, can average about 1 to 5k words a day, more on weekends.
Let's take the 5k average. 5k times 5 days is 25k words a week. That's 100k words in a month. Depending on the genre the average novel length is 65k to 80k. Harlequins tend to be in the 55 to 70k range while Science Fiction and Fantasy tend to be in the 90k and higher range. Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series averages in the 100 to 125k range. Which means an author could have a rough draft written once a month. So given time for revisions and editing, then yes, it's possible to produce four or even more novels in a year.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. I personally know two writers who regularly churn out 40k or more words a day. By regularly I mean more than once a week. Is it all great work immediately ready for publication? Hell no, but that's why it's called a rough draft.

As for being able to keep up that kind of pace? It's called a job. Writers who take their craft seriously and don't prattle on about the "muse" and being "inspired" sit their butts in a chair and write for set amounts of time every day. If they're a full-time writer they typically portion out their day for specific tasks with actually writing being the major portion of their workday.

All writers produce clunkers along with polished gems. Anyone who claims they haven't is lying. But saying that all of an author's work must be crap if they have a high-production volume is disingenuous and tells me you haven't bothered to read any of their work. I have read Mercedes Lackey and Barbara Cartland and Nora Roberts. Actually I've works by all of the authors I mentioned in my first post. And I will admit Cartland's novels were a little simplistic but that doesn't make them bad. But let's look at some other authors who haven't been so prolific to have produced 100s of works but have produced over 50.

Stephen King
Agatha Christie
Joyce Carol Oates
Anne McCaffrey
Erle Stanley Gardner

I dare you to tell me all of their work is crap.

edited: Nevermind on Piers Anthony. It's been decades since I've read his work and due to my age at the time hadn't noticed certain 'themes' in his work that are just creepy.

[BookJunkieLI]

To get back to the point of this thread, yes, I have a few books I regularly reread. I reread because I enjoy the characters and the story and sometimes just because I know exactly what I'm getting and don't have to worry about being surprised. Kind of like comfort food.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Not a book, but I did write some short stories (and one on Mobileread, last year), and a lot of photography tutorials a few years ago. Writing takes a HUGE amount of time to get it right. Even when writing stuff you know a lot about (in my case, photography), it's nearly impossible to just write and be done with it.

For the first 25 to 30 years I was a programmer I had to write documentation for probably 2/3 of my larger programs. Typically that was between 8 and 25 pages but sometimes it was quite a lot longer. I nearly always did it in a day; sometimes two days. I wrote most of it start to finish, sometimes outlining it first but usually not. After writing it I'd read through it once and make corrections and then I was done.

I always got more compliments on my documentation than on my programs.

I realize that's nothing like writing a novel, which would be much more time consuming, but I think it does illustrate that for some people writing is easier than for others. Just like most things are easier for some than for others.

Most of the programmers I worked with, at least those who wrote decent documentation, took 3 or 4 times as long to write it. Some of those were faster programmers but I always breezed through the documentation. It just came easily to me.

Barry

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BookJunkieLI

As for being able to keep up that kind of pace? It's called a job. Writers who take their craft seriously and don't prattle on about the "muse" and being "inspired" sit their butts in a chair and write for set amounts of time every day.

Please provide me some of that unlimited amount of creativity.

I dare you to tell me all of their work is crap

Not all of it, but their best works are often the ones that took the longest and had the most research done for it (especially in fantasy and science fiction).

And THAT is the stuff that gets reread over and over again; the works that took a huge amount of research, time, and creativity. Nobody is going to reread the entire Harlequin oevre every year.