How many novels per year should someone write?

[DelActivisto]

This article indicates that - obviously - you should write 1.7 novels per year.

How Many Novels Should You Write in a Year? Bad Advice for Writers Has Your Answer! | HuffPost

We’ve been dispensing official Bad Advice for a little while now (for instance, here, hereand here), and we take this job seriously, because legitimately bad advice for writers is an art form, and we like to take our time crafting that advice. We have a laboratory. And white coats. We look adorable in them.

With all the work we put into this, we’re displeased when someone who is not licensed and certified to administer bad advice to writers comes along and does so without even consulting our institute first.

Question: what is the correct number of novels a novelist should write in a year?

Answer:

Based on our calculations — 1.736

Yes, that is the exact number of novels a writer should aim for in order to create a genuine, legitimate, quality work of novelistic art.

You’re welcome!

Also, if this number looks familiar to you, it should! It’s the Golden Ratio! Plus 0.118!
An amazing coincidence!

We’re sure you have a lot of questions.

 

[Cathbad]

You should write 52 novels a year.


Unless you want them to be good.'

 

[R.T James]

Corrrect answer is 42.

Need I say more?

 

[DelActivisto]

Actually 8.5 novels would be about right. That's Euler's number times Pi. This is very scientific, as I've used actual constants and multiplied them together in a very scientific manner to get a very scientific answer.

 

[Harpo]

Start a new novel every two months, and take two years over each. Thusly, while each novel takes two years, you'll be writing a dozen novels at the same time, and finishing six per year.

 

[DelActivisto]

Start a new novel every two months, and take two years over each. Thusly, while each novel takes two years, you'll be writing a dozen novels at the same time, and finishing six per year.

Okay, but will you come visit me at the insane asylum?

 

[Harpo]

Sure, when I take a break from these 52 novels

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Three novels a month was good enough for Robert Silverberg, and he has more than one Hugo award.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Here we go: eFanzines.com - Earl Kemp: e*I* Vol. 3 No. 3

"Working at fantastic speeds (I once did a complete novel in 3-l/2 days, just to see if I could) we mastered the knack of improvising plots from scratch and making everything work out neatly at the required 50,000-word length: a wonderful exercise in structural discipline that has stood me in good stead ever since. There was no time to make mistakes: we had to get it right on the first draft, and we did, telling good stories in crisp, no-nonsense prose. [...]
And also we never forgot that we were doing the fundamental thing that writers are supposed to do: providing pleasure and entertainment for readers who genuinely loved our work. Huge numbers of the books were snapped up as fast as they came from the presses, which meant that they filled a need, that somebody appreciated them a whole lot. It meant something to me to know that my novels were brightening the lives of a vast host of people in those dim dark days of thirty-plus years ago when Puritanism was riding high and sex was in chains."

 

[DelActivisto]

*looks up from WIP he's been working on for 10 years* Um. Neat!

 

[picklematrix]

I watched a documentary about Pulp Fiction books that claimed authors during the great depression would write 1 million words a year and get a decent income. Thats how old L ron hubbard made a living.
I need to pick up the pace for sure!

 

[Joshua Jones]

Using numerology and multiple ancient texts over a decade of study, I found the illusive answer to this most thorny question.

Which I will gladly share with you, for a one time donation of £19.99... I will even throw in a personalized Blood Moon reading, free of charge! Just pay separate processing and handling fee.

 

[tinkerdan]

Clearly the author(s) of the article has not visited author homes.
The number they are specifying is likely the number of books that will be published by an author in a year(if they are lucky).
Were they to visit the author and find their stash of trash it would easily be found that there are some larger number of novels written per year, many of which are not allowed to leave the house and or in some cases allowed to see the light of day.

And then there are those, many happy return manuscripts, that make the circuit from publisher to publisher without ever finding a home.

 

[Shorewalker]

Well, I've written 460,000 words in under three years.

The problem is that around 410,000 of them are utter dung...