Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Writers can write more than we do. Is this lazy? And, by the way, lazy was the worst thing in the world according to my mother, so that comments stings.

Writers in 2026 are for the most part lazy. — Dean Wesley Smith

Mr. Smith’s comment stings. According to my mother, there was nothing worse in this world than being lazy. Don’t be a bump on a log. Have some gumption. Do something. Surprising to me, gumption is recognized as a correctly spelled word. I thought it was just a made-up sound. But I digress.

Back to lazy writers. I am not banging out text on a manual typewriter. I know that works because at one time in my life I would bang on words on a portable manual typewriter. I wish I still had a portable manual typewriter. They are still available, ribbons and all, but I digress again. I am not walking around a library peering through old reference books. I also did that in the past.

When I need a fact, bang, there it is. When I need a date, bang, there it is. Copy, paste, edit, move on.

Let’s go through the numbers. A person can type 40 words per minute. That is not difficult. The word processors correct spelling mistakes and such. At 40 words per minute, we have 2,400 words per hour. Write only four hours a day, we have 9,600 words. In eight days, we have a 70,000-word novel. That comes to at least 40 novels in a year. We are just making up stories.

Of course 40 novels a year is silly. No one could … Yes, someone could. A novel a month is silly, but entirely possible.

Perhaps writers in 2026 are, for the most part, lazy.

Let’s drop from novels to short stories. Let’s go for 3,000 words in a short story. Hmm. A couple of hours in one afternoon a week makes a short story a week. Ray Bradbury is quoted, “Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” Maybe it is possible, but Mr. Bradbury’s words are inspiring.

All this is to say something about what I could be doing and what I am doing. I am still in a full-time paying job. I don’t have the energy at the end of the day to bang out a thousand words an hour. Retirement looms. Maybe I will stop being lazy.