Wednesday, November 03, 2004

#169

I finally wrapped up the current manuscript today. I still have a little editing and polishing to do on it, and Livia may have some revisions to suggest before she's finished going through it, but from a creative standpoint, anyway, it's finished. As I've probably mentioned before, I love finishing books. I also love starting books. It's all that stuff in between that wears me out. This is my 169th novel (not counting a couple of trunk books that never sold). When I started in this business, I figured 100 books would be a good total for a career. I've been revising that goal upward for quite a while. Now I think I'm looking at 300 or so, if I'm lucky and can keep getting contracts. Sounds like a lot, but I know plenty of writers who have done more. Some of them, a lot more. I also know a guy who once said that no writer could ever write more than seven good books. In that case, I was either washed up a long time ago . . . or I just haven't written my seven good ones yet.

Still reading the Ferrigno book.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

James, I'm in awe of you hitting 169. I doubt I'll ever be able to push my output into double digits and you are way into triples! Congrats!

Terrill Lankford