The Long Way

Never mind all the time one is expected to spend marketing one's own books, looking for new places to submit, finding out what editors are seeking, etc.  Never mind.  Let's talk about the act of book-writing itself.

I've been reading more and more interviews with successful novelists, and what I see is alarming enough to scare me off the pursuit of success.  One person writes 2000 words per day (that's eight double-spaced pages) come hell or high water.  One writes six drafts of a chapter each week until he has all the chapters, then throws away the first chapter and re-does it, no matter what.  One throws out every chapter as she goes, deleting the file from her hard drive, forcing her to start from scratch with each draft (how is that a draft, anyway?).  One regularly kills off her characters, requiring her to re-think her plot details.

Maybe when I've been at this a while, I, too, will have some writing quirk that makes me look like a workaholic madwoman.  Right now, I don't have the time or energy.