This here is just for posterity basically, no words of wisdom for anyone but myself. I had to write a short story for writing class, the first of three we will have to do for the semester. I had a story I was working on for several days, but it wasn't coming fast enough for me.

I am getting a new car tomorrow, if everything goes as planned. (it is relevant) I was in the shower this morning thinking about it, remembering the time I had with the salesman, and the time he had with his superiors. It's an awful experience if anyone at all in the process even seems shifty. It's irritating. I was thinking about this irritation in the shower, as I said, when I thought about what it would be like for someone to get a little too fed up with the experience, and go what we call 'postal'.

It took about five minutes, but I had the scenario worked out in about five minutes, from beginning to end. The story we are supposed to write can't be more than ten pages of double spaced type. I started with a clean screen, and in about two hours had seven pages done, with the ending just below the next margin. I finished it tonight, and should be in bed now. I was headed that way, and was thinking about the writing book Stephen King put out called, oddly enough, On Writing. It is required reading for the class.

In it he says he writes every single day and won't stop until he has over 2000 words. I decided to check to make sure, and that is what he says. MS Word has a nifty feature that counts your words for you in a document. I checked mine and it has 2364. It was relatively easy and painless, and my wife says it's good.

Here is what King actually says...

Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t
slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every
day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind—they begin
to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative
cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on
the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of
spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel
like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.
Writing is at its best—always, always, always—when it is a
kind of inspired play for the writer. I can write in cold blood
if I have to, but I like it best when it’s fresh and almost too
hot to handle.
I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for
Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a
lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview you
have to say something, and it plays better if it’s something at
least half-clever. Also, I didn’t want to sound like a workaholic
dweeb (just a workaholic, I guess). The truth is that when I’m
writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That
includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday (at my age
you try to ignore your goddam birthday anyway). And when
I’m not working, I’m not working at all, although during
those periods of full stop I usually feel at loose ends with
myself and have trouble sleeping. For me, not working is
the real work. When I’m writing, it’s all the playground,
and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty
damned good.
I used to be faster than I am now; one of my books (The
Running Man) was written in a single week, an accomplishment
John Creasey would perhaps have appreciated (although
I have read that Creasey wrote several of his mysteries in two
days). I think it was quitting smoking that slowed me down;

nicotine is a great synapse enhancer. The problem, of course,
is that it’s killing you at the same time it’s helping you compose.
Still, I believe the first draft of a book—even a long
one—should take no more than three months, the length of
a season. Any longer and—for me, at least—the story begins
to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the
Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast
on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot
activity.
I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000
words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a
goodish length for a book—something in which the reader
can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
On some days those ten pages come easily; I’m up and out
and doing errands by eleven-thirty in the morning, perky as
a rat in liverwurst. More frequently, as I grow older, I find
myself eating lunch at my desk and finishing the day’s work
around one-thirty in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the
words come hard, I’m still fiddling around at teatime. Either
way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I
allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.
The biggest aid to regular (Trollopian?) production is
working in a serene atmosphere. It’s difficult for even the
most naturally productive writer to work in an environment
where alarms and excursions are the rule rather than the
exception. When I’m asked for “the secret of my success” (an
absurd idea, that, but impossible to get away from), I sometimes
say there are two: I stayed physically healthy (at least
until a van knocked me down by the side of the road in the
summer of 1999), and I stayed married. It’s a good answer
because it makes the question go away, and because there is
an element of truth in it. The combination of a healthy body


and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes
zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of
my working life possible. And I believe the converse is also
true: that my writing and the pleasure I take in it has contributed
to the stability of my health and my home life.