What the most effective amount of writing per day might be is a question that bothered me for the last three years. Too much focus on page count and the work seems forced and needs heavy, if not complete, revisions. Too few pages and the manuscript takes forever.

As for the first method – maybe revisions aren’t so bad, and are a necessary part of the process, but top down rewrites really goad. For me, that’s a surefire route to frustration. If a manuscript is written with the intent that ninety percent is bound for the ashcan anyway, why bother? I never liked redoing work because my boss agreed to something stupid or broke something that worked; I’d rather not spin my wheels by my own design.

Enter the opposite argument, a more exacting, and in my opinion, maintainable level of production. Since October 2004 that’s the method used for the book formerly known as Velocity. After dealing with endless revisions on the Ridge Runner, I realized there was little hope for improvements in my present state of mind, so I started from scratch on a new project. With the Ridge Runner no longer a weight, I focused on less on output, more on quality. That meant reading a chapter out loud ten to twenty times, revising it on each pass until the biggest problem was a dropped word or misspelling.

Basically, I drop a word or two on every page, it’s very difficult for me to catch, and less so for a fresh pair of eyes. Therefore I assume I drop words, catch what I can and let Editor person beat up the holdouts. And as for spelling, auto correct is far from infallible. By thy way, the chapter reviews doesn’t include all the in place edits. Once new content reaches the page mark, it’s open season.

OK, so now there is one true draft, and it reads better from the word go, but that brings me to another problem, which is the drastic falloff in output. Even writing six days out of seven, the weekly page count seems pathetic. It’s been bugging me a lot lately, as I near the one year mark of working this way.

While reading Chris Moore’s most recent blog entry, at last I found comfort. He mentions that his output averages five hundred words a day, or less than one and one-half pages. So a manuscript takes him a year and change. Or maybe longer, but let’s say a year. He’s worked this way for each of his nine books for the last fourteen years. I can live with that level of productivity. If a writing life is thirty to fifty years, at that rate that means twenty to thirty books. Not too shabby. Not to shabby at all.

Today I read 203 pages or 58,000 words of the book formerly known as Velocity, start to finish. Not too bad at all. It’s definitely shop-able, in less technical terms, in good enough condition to show to an agent. Just have to write the rest now.

And that’s the big question: the length the finished manuscript might clock out at. My answer is between 375-400 pages. Somewhere slightly north or south of 100,000 words. Why 100,000? I did quite a bit of research about manuscript length. Young adult fiction is 40-60,000 words. Mike Brody is not for children, and though maybe teenagers will like him, he’s not YA. Adult fiction is anywhere from 75,000-140,000 words. However, first time novelists trying to pitch the Bible length tomes are at a disadvantage, because the more words, the more paper required, the more the book costs to produce. Publishers don’t like spending money for some odd reason. The only authors pumping out 140,000 or more words per book are established, and therefore safe risks. Notice that the first few Harry Potter books were far shorter than the later episodes. So 75,000 words is the bare minimum of flair. What does an acquiring editor think of an author who does the minimum? Who knows.

My preferences also figure into the target. Once a book exceeds 350 pages, I skim chunks where I sense the author is dragging things for sake of page count. Besides Harry Potter, die hard Clancy fans, and some Stephen King devotees, I doubt I’m alone. Beyond 500 pages, the skimming increases, unless the author makes the prose work and doesn’t explore senseless diversions that are texture at best, ego stroking at worst. For instance, I read every word of the Interview with the Vampire. Of the sequel, the Vampire Lestat, there was a whole lot of skimming ( and cursing ) going on in my house. Her writing style was only partly to blame.

Nonfiction is a different beast. A 1300 page nonfiction books cover to cover is no problem if the subject is interesting enough, especially a well-written biography or a study of an important historical event.

I’m of the leave them wanting more school of entertainment, instead of the Anne Rice branch, which verges on no one else is allowed an opinion, so read it and like it, or go away. Should I sell 100 million, maybe I’ll cop a little attitude.