Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I am a prolific writer, well, sort of.

I am in a temporary state of work and semi-retirement and hobby. For the past couple of weeks, I idle away the hours writing fiction.

In a recent week, I wrote two short stories while doing a dozen other things. I wrote a 3,300-word work of fiction in two-and-a-half hours. Not two-and-a-half weeks, hours. As in sixty-minute hours.

Okay, maybe the story was junk. Then again, maybe if I could type faster I could have cut that time.

There are all sorts of formulas about how many words a minute a person can type times the hours in the day divided by the number of words in a novel or short story. For example, 40 words-a-minute is 2,400 words-an-hour. Hence, a 3,300-word short story is done in under two hours.

People hear those formulas and scoff. “That works if you already have the words in your head.” Maybe my head is overly big and holds too many words to make any sense.

Well, given those formulas, I can write a novel in two weeks. Junk? Maybe. But then, I can take a day off to recharge, and then write another novel. Two novels a month, let’s see, carry the one… that’s twelve novels in a year. No, wait, that’s 24 novels in a year. Can a person write 24 bad novels in a row? Don’t answer that. Anyway, that productivity is impossible. Well, take two weeks off for Christmas and another week for Thanksgiving, and toss in one for the 4th of July, that cuts out two novels in the year.

Of course this is all nonsense. Who would do such a thing? Such volume would indicate AI! No, not really. Maybe it indicates someone who needs a better hobby. Maybe it indicates someone who thinks his stories are worthwhile, i.e., the guy is delusional.

Regardless, the numbers are real and the math is simple. Old folks, like me, have a lifetime of stories in our heads. And when I tire of typing, I can use one of these fancy new software things that let’s me dictate to the computer. The words-per-minute jumps even higher. I would become hoarse.