Knowing what you’re getting into

Happy New Year!

Traditionally, no matter how or when it is marked, a new year means a fresh start: cleaning out the old, revving up the new, and getting the stuff that’s stalled a kick in the pants. Depending on where one is in life, this can mean anything from pulling up stakes and moving to a different continent to finally fixing the hem that tore out of one’s favorite pair of pants. Quite often, the fresh start involves personal New Years resolutions, which almost all involve changing something about our lives or ourselves. Examples include plan a budget, lose/gain weight, get a promotion, drink more water, and the ever-popular “write that novel.”

The trouble with that last (you knew that was what I was going to talk about, didn’t you?) is that unless someone has done it at least once, they have no idea what it takes to write and publish a novel.

I was faced with a doubly terrible example of this a few weeks ago when I was coaxed into watching a program where people were getting advice on making their goals “smart” (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound). After much thought, one twenty-something gentleman announced that his goal was to publish an as-yet-unwritten novel he’d been thinking about for a while. The coordinator said that was specific and measurable, and it was something the guy could realistically achieve, which was all true. Then he got to the time-bound part, and the would-be writer said, “OK, my goal is to write a novel and have it up on Amazon by April 1, and a paper version available by the first of May.”

I cringed. I cringed even harder when all the coordinator said was, “Do you think you can do it by then?” and the would-be writer said confidently, “Yes.” Because it was obvious that neither of these people had any idea what was involved.

We’re a society that thrives on instant gratification, and computers have done a lot to make things even more instant. This makes it really difficult to judge how long something is going to take when you haven’t ever done it before. It also means that people think a really long project is one that takes a couple of months, regardless of how many moving parts something has.

Now, it is technically possible for someone to write and publish a paper novel in four and a half months, by which I mean “the technology exists to make this happen.” The problem is, it requires trade-offs that a first time author is unlikely to be aware of.

A first-time author is not going to get an “instant book” from a traditional publisher (and in any case, an “instant book” still takes them six to ten weeks to produce, plus another four to get the contracts written and signed, leaving the writer all of one week to write and sell a book so brilliant that the publisher would be willing to do this). So the writer’s only realistic option to make this goal is to self-publish.

I know a couple of people who do this, and it takes around two months to get from manuscript to e-book with print-on-demand option. They have to arrange for copy-editing, layout and page design, cover design, and blurbs, as well as do the final proofing, approve everything, and get it all put together in whatever format(s) the e-book publisher and print-on-demand printer require.

The programs that claim to do all this for you at the push of a button are…overhyped, meaning that you still have to check everything carefully after you push the button, which takes far more time than you might think. There’s also a certain amount of waiting for other people to do things (like cover design and/or painting and copy-editing), which can cause unexpected delays. And we haven’t even considered setting up and running some kind of promotion to let people know the book is coming and they should buy it. (Reviews won’t be out on launch day unless the reviewers get copies well beforehand, so that they have time to read it and write their review…and they aren’t going to drop everything to do that, so “well beforehand” does not mean “in just enough time.”)

Still, assuming that everything runs perfectly smoothly, with no surprises (and I don’t think this ever happens, even when everyone involved has years of experience and knows exactly what to expect), it might be possible to get all of this done in two months. That leaves the writer having to produce a copy-edit-ready manuscript in two and a half months, or 75 days.

Writing a 100,000-word manuscript in 75 days requires averaging 1,333 usable words per day, every single day (and these days, 100,000 words is a bit light for a full-length novel, unless you’re writing YA or “teen” category books. Also, just typing that many words takes time.) Again, I know people who can do this…but I don’t know many, and I only know one who did it on her first try. Most of the writers I know have taken between one and five years to finish their first novel (and in several cases, that novel was an unpublishable “learning experience”), and ramped up to their eventual regular production speed over the course of their first few books.

So when I heard the gentleman above seriously set himself the goal of writing a novel and getting it published in four and a half months, I cringed. Yes, it’s possible that he’s one of the rare speed-demon writers (I know one whose record was a finished, professional novel written in eleven days), but since he’s never done this before, he can’t count on that. He certainly can’t count on all the moving parts of getting the book into its final format running perfectly with no surprises, especially since, as a first-timer, he’s going to have to figure out where to find freelance copy-editors and cover designers…and dig up the money to pay them. In my view, this was highly unlikely to be a “realistic, achievable” goal. And he didn’t know it.