09 March 2006

Awe (and a little bit of shock thrown in)

Word Nerd is in awe.
In the last month, Rachel Caine and JA Konrath have both finished writing their next novels.
Understand, these are not labors of years... no, we're talking the labor of a month here... and according to Caine's blog, a push of close to 20,000 words in the last two or three days.
Word Nerd knows this is possible -- the National Novel Writing Month freaks (I mean participants) do 50K words in one month.
She's in awe of them too.
Because here's the rub: the Word Nerd could probably crank out the 40,000 remaining words left to write in the first draft of the work in progress in the next month. Probably here means, "if she abandons sleeping and ignores the mounds of cat hair that will take up residence under her desk and behind doors because she's writing and not vaccuming, etc."
So what's the difference? Is it the fact Konath and Caine had contracts forcing them to finish the books? Possible. Very very possible.
But there's a vicious circle, here, thinks Word Nerd. How do you get the book contract for the sequel when the first one's not done? And if there's no deadline pressure, how does the first one ever get done?

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