I'd like to know if anyone can recommend research possibilities to find fast authors. I'm writing a series of articles on NaNoWriMo this year and I'd like to be able to pepper them with the names of other famous works that were done under a time crunch. Jack Keroac is famous for fast writing, as is Harlan Ellison and Joyce Carol Oates and George Simenon and Balzac and more. Faulkner wrote "As I Lay Dying" in 8 weeks, Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" was written in two.
Any others? I'd especially like to know about current writers. You guys are as literate and widely-read as any other group I've ever know, I was hoping you could help out.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Asimov wrote are a pretty incredible clip, I've heard.
I probably wouldn't include George R. R. Martin in that list if I were you (::very envious of Jenny Gardner for any advance readings of A Feast of Crows she may be privy to: Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
James Michener wrote pretty fast (but lonnnnng books). HOwever, I remember reading an article that said, though he wrote fast, he rewrote slowly, so he came out about even.
Asimov must have written fast from the shear number of book he'd written, and not nearly all of them in the Sci Fi deptartment.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Mozart? He wrote The Marriage of Figaro in six weeks.
Posted by ae (Member # 3291) on :
Michael Moorcock is another, I think.
Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
Would it be bad to say I think there should be a comma in that? Yeah, that'd be bad. Forget I said anything.
Posted by jehovoid (Member # 2014) on :
Is Carl Lewis an author?
Posted by msquared (Member # 4484) on :
Stephen King?
msquared
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Not Robert Jordan
Posted by jehovoid (Member # 2014) on :
It only took me 10 seconds to write this post.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
Hugh Hefner has written a few things, and he was pretty fast with the women.
Oh, you don't mean fast in that way.
um...
nevermind.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
There have been rumors that OSC is a fast author, but actually that's just some guy going around to bars *saying* that he's OSC.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Damn you Dan Raven! My joke would have been much funnier if it hadn't been immediately proceeded by yours!
Posted by jehovoid (Member # 2014) on :
Traci Lords wrote a book.
(on second thought, it was probably ghost-written)
[ October 16, 2003, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: jehovoid ]
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I heard Traci Lords read a book once. not sure if I believe that one though.
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Actually, from what I understand, OSC is a speedy writer. It takes him a while to develop in his head, then he writes it in about 6 weeks. Also, he did two short stories over a writers critique weekend. Since he had to read the other stories and they sat around critiqueing them during the day, he wrote them in his spare time, at night...
edit: from his explanation about a story in Maps in a Mirror, a fairly vague rememberance of it.
[ October 16, 2003, 12:11 PM: Message edited by: Amka ]
Posted by Danzig (Member # 4704) on :
Amka- I think he describes the same event in the author's note/afterword of Folk of the Fringe.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Howard Waldrop is kind of like that too. He'll writes short stories almost exclusively, but I've read that he often procrastinates until just before a deadline, and then writes his stories in a matter of hours. Of course, when he does that he's drawing on what I can only assume to be months of research, but still....
Posted by eslaine (Member # 5433) on :
I don't think that Moorcock writes at the speed in which he used to anymore. It's more of a matter of always having something going. But, earlier in his career, he certainly turned them out at a great pace.
Posted by ae (Member # 3291) on :
'S what I'm referring to. I think either he or M. John Harrison once said that it was Moorcock's and others' ability to crank out novels in hours and then sell them that helped keep New Worlds afloat. Or perhaps I'm hallucinating it. Hm.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Robert Silverburg is another one who used to crank 'em out at a pretty rapid clip.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I think I read somewhere that for a while Barbara Cartland was writing romance novels one a day. But I might be mis-remembering that.
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