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

[theducks]

Originally Posted by 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.

Some of her book are with her Husband.
That is not the only Husband and wife team. The other half does not always appear on original releases or same last name
(just a few)
David Eddings, Ilona Andrews, Randall Garret,

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Please provide me some of that unlimited amount of creativity.

I'd love some of it myself. But just because I'm not capable of writing like that doesn't mean no one else is capable of it.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

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.

How do you know that? Do you ask the author how long it took them to research/plot/write/edit a particular novel? Do you know these authors personally that you know how long it takes them to produce a novel? Or do you "just know" that it took them a "long time" to put it together? Because I call bullshit. Yes, there are some novels that when you read them all you can think is "this was just slapped together and tossed out there". Most novels, there's no way of knowing how long it took the author to write them. Plus if an author frequently writes in the same genre or series, they typically keep all of their notes and research from previous projects so that they do not have to keep researching the same information over and over.

And comparing rereading a single author to an entire genre is again disingenuous. No one rereads an entire genre unless they have a very very narrowly defined genre. Plus the OP stated they can reread most of the books by the three authors they listed cover-to-cover in just a day. Each book in day, not all of them in a day. Whether that's hyperbole on the OP's part only the OP can tell us. But based on that, yes, they could easily reread all of Lackey, McCaffrey and Heinlein in less than a year. Assuming they actually do reread all of them. And if they do reread all of them that's their choice.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BookJunkieLI

How do you know that? Do you ask the author how long it took them to research/plot/write/edit a particular novel? Do you know these authors personally that you know how long it takes them to produce a novel? Or do you "just know" that it took them a "long time" to put it together? Because I call bullshit. Yes, there are some novels that when you read them all you can think is "this was just slapped together and tossed out there". Most novels, there's no way of knowing how long it took the author to write them. Plus if an author frequently writes in the same genre or series, they typically keep all of their notes and research from previous projects so that they do not have to keep researching the same information over and over.

I don't "know" anything, but I read fantasy. It tends to come in long series. Some are 30+ books. What I can see is that most of the authors I've read take many years to create the first trilogy. Take Terry Brooks for example, just because I've been reading him lately.

He took from 1969-1970 to 1985 to create his first Shannara trilogy, and they are very good books. OK, the first one is somewhat Tolkienesque, but the the second is regarded of one of the best fantasy books of its time (and by some one of the best fantasy books written).

Then, he broke through as a writer, and he started writing a book a year. More and more his series moved from separate books to one very long book with a lot of padding, broken up into three parts, rehashing plots he has used before.

R.A. Salvatore is comparable. David Eddings, in the end, blatantly (almost) copied a book four times (in The Dreamers). Most of the authors I've been reading for a long time are writing worse books the longer they write and the more they write.

Most of those books are not worth rereading. I'll happily reread Brooks' "The Elfstones of Shannara" a few more times, but you won't see me rereading "Dark Legacy of Shannara", which is basically the same story in another time, padded with a subplot (which was a repeat/continuation of the plot in "High Druid of Shannara" actually) and stretched up to fill three books.

[pjmpjm]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If I'm not careful, I'll be re-re-re-reading The Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings, and the History of Middle Earth the rest of my life. For some reason, I never get tired of Middle Earth. Same is true for Shogun; I can read that book and watch the 10 hour series forever. The Lion King (1) is another movie I can keep watching over and over and over... and have been doing so for about 20 years now.

I know what you mean. The really great books can be read and re-read indefinitely.

[Luffy]

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

Hey Katsunami and BookJunkieLI, thanks for addressing my question, grammatically wrong though it was. The chat between you two has been great to follow!

I'm siding with Katsunami. BookJunkieLI, I respect your opinion, but what you have not addressed is that however many hours have gone into a book, readers often choose poor to mediocre work and turn them into bestsellers.

Here's an answer that someone had written online concerning readers :

" First we must ask how good people are at making judgments. Judgment is based on prior experiences and accrued knowledge. We can judge the quality of something by comparing it to other, similar things, and by comparing it to a set of rules about what makes something 'good'.

The worse something is, the easier it will be to see that it's bad. Almost anyone who walks into a house that is missing a wall will immediately recognize that this is a low quality house. But it's hard to tell if something is very good. Few people would be able to recognize a drainage or insulation problem, because it requires more experience to see such things.

Take a worn-down house that isn't up to code, give it a new paint job, new carpets, new fixtures, and suddenly, the average person will see it as a 'quality house', while an expert will not be as easily fooled. Books can be judged in a similar way, and the more complex (or subtle) the techniques used, the harder it will be for the average person to recognize that it is good.

The idea of 'crowdsourcing' is that you will usually have someone in a group who has more knowledge in a subject than others, and hence, will be able to provide knowledge or information about that subject. This is how something like Wikipedia gets written: the experts in each area come forward and share their knowledge, because groups of people contain a lot of different experiences.

But this is different than taking the average opinion of a group of people. Crowds are good at basic information, but the more specialized it becomes, the worse the crowd gets. Anyone who has seen 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' has seen this effect. The person can ask the crowd for their opinion, and the more difficult the question, the less useful the crowd will be.

Crowds are not going to pick terrible, stupid books (or movies, or whatever), but they also won't be able to pick good ones. At best, they will pick kind of average, low-quality stuff that isn't awful.

But that's not the only factor in how people choose. The average person also likes things which are familiar, recognizable, and fit into their worldview. This means that a crappy book can be more popular if it tells people what they want to hear and does so in a familiar, comforting way.

This is how genres develop: authors follow their own interests and create familiar things that people will respond to. In C.S. Lewis' works, you have some very common ideas and philosophies. They might not be productive or even healthy, but many people respond to them because they find them familiar, comforting, or self-justifying.

One of the hardest things for a person to do is to disagree with the methods of someone who they agree with. We tend to want to be confirmed; when we see someone who has reached the same conclusion as we have, we tend to feel sympathy for them, even if their methods are underhanded or unskilled.

Another problem is that you can only like a book if you know it exists. The reason for the popularity of many books (like Harry Potter or Twilight), is that a reader for Barnes and Noble decided they could be successful and gave them a large advertising budget. Copies of the book were put at the front of the store for everyone to see, so it's not surprising they became more successful than the books crammed in the shelves in the back, and all because of one person's decision.

So, just because something is successful doesn't mean it's good, because there are many factors that go into success, and quality is not one of the major ones. The books must pass a certain low threshold for quality, but beyond that it depends more on whether the book is well advertised and whether it fits in with what people already think.

People happily consume low-quality goods because it's easy to do so. Whether it's a lamp from Walmart that breaks in two months, an Ikea shelf that starts to collapse as you build it, A McDonald's meal that provides a great deal of fat and little nutrition, or a cliche novel with no content or originality, popular things are often low quality.

If the average person has relatively little experience or knowledge, it shouldn't be surprising that they make decisions to support things which are of low quality, because they do not have the ability to recognize high-quality items, and because low-quality items are often advertised to them aggressively.

This doesn't mean that something that is successful must be of low-quality, or that things that are unsuccessful are of high quality. Sometimes high-quality stuff becomes successful, and sometimes, when a hipster says you've 'probably never heard of' some band, it's not because he's found something cool, it's because they suck.

But popularity is not a sign that something is good, or that it's worthwhile, or that it will be remembered. Many of the bestsellers of the past are ignored today, and even in the Victorian period, there were jokes about how bad popular novels were."

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by Luffy

Here's an answer that someone had written online concerning readers :

Please cite (or link) your sources when quoting.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Luffy

Hey Katsunami and BookJunkieLI, thanks for addressing my question, grammatically wrong though it was. The chat between you two has been great to follow!

I'm siding with Katsunami. BookJunkieLI, I respect your opinion, but what you have not addressed is that however many hours have gone into a book, readers often choose poor to mediocre work and turn them into bestsellers.

The response you quoted was incredibly condescending, elitist, and snobby:

If the average person has relatively little experience or knowledge, it shouldn't be surprising that they make decisions to support things which are of low quality, because they do not have the ability to recognize high-quality items, and because low-quality items are often advertised to them aggressively.

So most readers don't know how to recognize quality--they're just so stupid, they're manipulated by publicity campaigns and are victims of groupthink. Oh, those poor dumb sheeple.

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I'm siding with Katsunami. BookJunkieLI, I respect your opinion, but what you have not addressed is that however many hours have gone into a book, readers often choose poor to mediocre work and turn them into bestsellers.

Right, this is the last time I'm commenting on this because both you and katsunami have completely missed the point I've been trying to make and, quite frankly, you're "quote" there is also highly insulting to both the average reader and myself.

This has nothing to do with bestsellers. It has to do with quality and the idea that just because a writer is able to produce a large volume of work that therefor all of it must be crap. I'm not saying that all of their work is going to be the greatest thing ever but it's not going to all be crap either. Plus just because a writer spends a lot of time and effort on something doesn't automatically mean it's going to great either. I've read more than one novel that I know the author spent months or even years working on only to not be able to get past the first chapter or even the first couple of pages.

But then again, what do I know as apparently I wouldn't be able to recognize quality writing if it bit me on the ass.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by BookJunkieLI

This has nothing to do with bestsellers. It has to do with quality and the idea that just because a writer is able to produce a large volume of work that therefor all of it must be crap.

You've said this more than once, but I don't think anyone has claimed that.

I'm not saying that all of their work is going to be the greatest thing ever but it's not going to all be crap either.

Well, it might be. In any case, junk (I'd prefer not to employ the crass term you use) is a continuum. There's good junk and there's very bad junk. The less time an author spends on a book, the farther along the junk continuum the book will likely fall.

Plus just because a writer spends a lot of time and effort on something doesn't automatically mean it's going to great either. I've read more than one novel that I know the author spent months or even years working on only to not be able to get past the first chapter or even the first couple of pages.

Generally speaking, the more time spent on a work, the better it will be. Perhaps the book would never have been to your taste? Perhaps you don't recognize quality? You seem to be very willing to accuse others of that.

One of my favorite authors, Trollope, was highly prolific and he had a day job, too. Not everyone who cranks them out is a Trollope, though, or a King or a Christie. Some are Gardners producing a bunch of potboilers. There's nothing wrong with that and I'm not even saying they're not good entertainment, but great literature it isn't. I've not read anything by Lackey, nor will I, but I don't think rate of production is an unreasonable litmus test; many authors do write the same book over and over or cut other corners, especially in terms of language. There's a lot of books out there and we all have our rules of thumb.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

Please cite (or link) your sources when quoting.

Duly noted. This quote is from an old post, and I only have copied it in simple text version. I'll do better next time.

Originally Posted by Catlady

The response you quoted was incredibly condescending, elitist, and snobby:



So most readers don't know how to recognize quality--they're just so stupid, they're manipulated by publicity campaigns and are victims of groupthink. Oh, those poor dumb sheeple.

Thanks for not being rude. I appreciate it. I'm an admirer of the person who wrote this. My contribution to this chat stops here, as it's not a forte of mine.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I'm siding with Katsunami. BookJunkieLI, I respect your opinion, but what you have not addressed is that however many hours have gone into a book, readers often choose poor to mediocre work and turn them into bestsellers.[/I]

Good I'm glad you are bowing out since you have been insulting enough.

Neither you or anyone else has the right to tell others that whatever they choose to read was written by a poor or mediocre writer. That is up to each individual to decide for themselves.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Neither you or anyone else has the right to tell others that whatever they choose to read was written by a poor or mediocre writer. That is up to each individual to decide for themselves.

Of course he does. It is up to each individual to decide for himself, so why should he care what someone else thinks? This seems inconsistent to me. The person who thinks a writer is poor or mediocre is entitled to his opinion, too, and even entitled to share it.

Extending this from the individual level, there's no point to discussing books if everyone has to pussyfoot around his real opinions for fear of offending someone who disagrees. So long as negative commentary is directed at the work or author and not at the reader, I find it constructive and informative. If comments are all hearts and puppies, how does it help anyone to find books they might like?

I don't understand the defensiveness people feel about their tastes or the need to express it in a belligerent tone or make it a problem of the person who doesn't have the same tastes.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Neither you or anyone else has the right to tell others that whatever they choose to read was written by a poor or mediocre writer. That is up to each individual to decide for themselves.

Well... Read Dan Brown.

Because he doesn't do his research (or does it and then warps it so he can somehow fit it into his story), some of his works are just bad. "Digital Fortress" for example is laughable if you know *anything* about the technical side of computers at all.

Some 'facts' he states are not just simplistic (simplified versions of the real thing; which I could live with, for the sake of a readable story), nor are they mistakes or mix-ups, they are just plain *wrong*.

It was a very entertaining book and while reading it, great hilarity ensued, but it's not re-read worthy. It might have been, if Dan Brown had used someone to get the technical stuff actually *right*. It would have made the book so much better.

Still, I do read Dan Brown, just because he's entertaining, and his stuff is an easy and quick read.

[barryem]

I have to agree that there are good writers and there are bad writers. Good writers often become popular. So do bad writers.

Some examples: I grew up while John Steinbeck was still writing and everyone I knew got excited when each new book came out. He was one of America's great writers and one of it's most popular.

James Patterson is a mediocre writer and is the best selling author in the world.

Among the popular thriller writers of the past few decades, David Baldacci is probably the least capable, and yet he's one of the best selling authors.

This doesn't insult readers of the poor authors or compliment readers of the better authors. I've enjoyed some books by Baldacci and Patterson. I see no problem with that. I don't only enjoy good writers. If a mediocre writer has a good idea I'm willing to consider reading it.

I probably should mention that one of my favorite authors when I was a teen was Richard S. Prather, who wrote the Shell Scott books. They weren't particularly well written. They weren't bad either. Kind of so so. But the character was completely outrageous and was a lot of fun to read about. I still read and enjoy one from time to time.

Yes, some authors are better than others and some are worse. And popularity has little to do with that. If you want proof think of how popular was the TV show "Alf" and also "My Mother the Horse". TV didn't get any worse than that but people loved them.

"The West Wing", which I personally think was the best series ever in the USA, was also very popular.

People of good taste recognize good writing but they don't necessarily disdain less than good writing.

There's nothing to argue about here, folks. Calm down!

Barry

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by issybird

So long as negative commentary is directed at the work or author and not at the reader, I find it constructive and informative.

The post that cfrizz was responding to was almost entirely made up of a quote that was about readers. The quote was even prefaced with:

Here's an answer that someone had written online concerning readers :

I don't care if other people like or dislike the books I enjoy. But... it's kind of like food. Recently, my roommate had me taste a new pasta sauce he brought home from the store. I liked it, he didn't. He said, "Well, that's because you're not Italian and you don't know good sauce." We then had a nice little conversation about him dismissing my tastes as inferior instead of acknowledging that we just might like different things.

It was especially ridiculous because I usually make all my sauces from scratch and he almost always likes them.

We can discuss books just fine without going into that territory. We can also lament the discoverability of the types of books we like without blaming other readers for mucking up the marketplace. We can say we don't care for most bestsellers without harping on "the crowd".

But stuff like this (from what Luffy posted from a source that's still to be identified):

If the average person has relatively little experience or knowledge, it shouldn't be surprising that they make decisions to support things which are of low quality, because they do not have the ability to recognize high-quality items, and because low-quality items are often advertised to them aggressively.

...isn't necessary for constructive commentary of books. THAT is what people are reacting to.