A Top Question I Get…

I Get This Question In Some Fashion Once or Twice A Week…

In general, the question boils down to this… “What do I (Dean) consider prolific?”

Or more honestly put (which some do), “How much do I (writer) need to write to be enough?”

I got this question twice because of my last post about professional writers always being behind on the publishing side. That post seemed to just boggle the mind of writers starting out, not imagining how they could write more than they could publish. So the question then comes up, “How much…?”

My answer…

I always start with the fact that every fiction writer is different. Writing is not like a corporate job with quotas and deadlines (although those things do help some writers.)

And when publishing was run by corporations and gate-keepers, deadlines made the process easer for some, harder for others.

Back to the hard fact that every fiction writer is different.

So the question I always return with is “What is your goal with your fiction writing?” Now my answer will vary wildly with the diverse answers to that question.

The most common answer I get (because this is what I teach and focus on) is… “My goal is I want to make a living with my fiction writing.”

To me, “living” means a certain level of money regularly, year-after-year. And who knows what the actual number might be for any one writer. (No writer is the same, no income need is the same.)

So I tend to say to those writers, “Four novels a year and some short stories every year, year-after-year.”

(Math…60,000 word novels divided by 3 months is 20,000 words per month or about 670 words per day.)

Sadly, most writers I give that pace to find it too much. And of course, that means that all the learning that goes along with that is too much, let alone the publishing. And when that is the case I know they have little hope in ever reaching the goal of making a living.

Of course, there is so, so, so much more than just a writing pace to make a living. Understanding of copyright and how the money comes to you from your writing is critical past any coffee money level.

And having good, branded covers and active “sales” copy is also critical. But those are only a few of the factors writers flat decide to ignore.

But the question I get most often is how much do I need to write to make a living?

I really wish that the more a writer wrote, the more money they would automatically make in this new world. But sadly, even my rough guideline of four-books-a-year falls short and is often not true because if the writer does not add in study and practice on the craft as they go along, no amount of writing will help. And ignoring copyright and branding and trademark will just make sure you never really get to your goal.