Award-winning and best-selling author of fantasy and romance, Jeffe Kennedy shares her first cup of coffee of the day with listeners, giving a daily insight into the realities of being a career author.
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A lot more today on fast drafting and the pros and cons of writing so fast that it requires huge amounts of revising time vs. taking more time while drafting so there's less revising time. As always, it depends on what you're trying to do!
The snippet I posted to Facebook is this:
“Will you be needing a lady’s maid, Lady Zephyr,” the page inquired.
“Moranu, no!” Zeph replied, a bit too forcefully—partly because she’d just registered that she and Astar would apparently be sharing a room. And the one bed. Praise the goddess. She hoped, anyway, as she and Astar hadn’t quite finished that conversation. A sneaky and most unfamiliar feeling kept prodding at her that she should release Astar from that vow. While another and far more familiar voice tried to shout it down. Why shouldn’t they enjoy they enjoy each other?
Because it will tear him apart and you know it, the annoying voice replied.
Shush, she told it. He’ll enjoy it and I know that. He’ll be better for sowing some oats before they lock him up to play stud for the High Throne.
Astar isn’t the kind to bed a woman lightly. If you do this, it will change everything for him. Are you willing to take responsibility for that?
Look, voice, she replied. I don’t know where you came from, but you are not welcome in my head.
I’ve always been here. You just don’t ever listen.
“Zephyr?” Astar said her name in a tone that indicated it wasn’t the first time.
She realized she’d been staring at the one—albeit quite large—and enticing bed while she wrestled with the annoying voice in her head. Wonderful. Now she was losing her mind.
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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of fantasy, romance, and all of the perfect places they intersect. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. This is my um for those of you on the video, the my favorite Caribbean mug, one that I got in St. Thomas. And it says, A little paradise is good for the soul. I guess it looks backwards to the people on video. But if you can read backwards, that's what it says. I um I miss beach. I mean, I know that there are a lot of worse worse impacts from the pandemic, but I I miss getting to visit the beach and see it. So it's nice to have some little reminders, right? Today is Friday, November 13th. Um, lots of people worried about it being Friday the 13th, uh, with all of the various chaos going on. But it was a beautiful sunrise here this morning. We're a little bit overcast today, but that makes for gorgeous sunrise. And I took photos, so we'll see if they came out. I will um I actually got out even the good camera. This is one of my new resolutions is to use the good camera, my Olympus. I even have like a telephoto lens for it and everything, um, to use that more often because even though the phone camera is handy, the photos aren't nearly as good. You know, they say they are, but they're not. I should even post, maybe I will later today if I get around to it, or on the blog, I should post a comparison of the same sunrise from my phone and with the Olympus. Uh, the way that the Olympus camera captures color is entirely different. So I don't know, I think it's worth it. Excuse me. So I have a busy day today. Um at nine o'clock I have the SAFWA board meeting, and although not there wasn't much on the agenda, so maybe people, maybe this one won't be so long. I'm hoping to get in an hour of writing before the board meeting starts. Um and I know I I've mentioned this before, but it makes such a huge difference for me if I can get uh that first hour of writing under my belt before I switch to something else. It's like it it lays in that, I don't know, lays in that thought pattern, lays sort of opens up the creative spigot, and it's so much easier to come back to than if I don't write anything and try to start after the board meeting or after I've done things. I noticed the same things when I had my day job, because even though I was working from home, I would uh sometimes have to do day job things before I wrote, you know, like the especially because the mothership was on the East Coast, and so I would have to go, you know, deal with them sometimes, you know, like have a an 8 a.m. meeting here or 7 a.m. meeting here. If that was what we needed to do, then then I would uh oblige because that's what you do, right, when you have a job. But it would always throw me off my stride. But if I can do that writing first, then that makes all the difference. And that's one of the reasons why I'm a proponent of morning writing, which I know many people are not. Um, I have several friends, uh, notably Grace Straven. She writes at night, and it's because that's when people leave her alone, the rest of the family's asleep. So she that's why I tease her about being nocturnal. She is going to be on the podcast uh next week, next Thursday morning. She is making a uh a huge exception for me, and she's going to get on at 9 a.m. her time. She is not guaranteeing whether or not she will be um fully cognizant. But we'll see. We'll coax it out of her, right? So I'm not sure what that is that I think it just has to do with whatever habit you build. So for me, being able to do that morning writing, um, it sort of sets the tone, it sets my frame of mind. It's definitely true for me that later hours of writing are much more uh productive for me than that first hour. You know, like I get somewhere between 600 and 800 words in that first hour if I'm doing well. Every once in a while I'll get a thousand or more, but it's pretty unusual. And it's usually if I'm like really into some scene with a lot of momentum in the book. But as with each successive sprint, I go much faster, much more fluidly. So yesterday I got my 3,000 words. Um, I've passed 50,000 on the book. Uh the uh the deed turned out well. Very pleased with my characters, they're very pleased with themselves. Um and sorry, I'm just really delighted with this particular scene. Uh amused by it. I posted a snippet to Facebook of it. Oh, sorry, library addict. Um where should I put it? I'll I'll stick it in the show notes. How sad? I'll put it in the show notes because it is a funny snippet. Um and that was from a couple days ago. It was like a lead up snippet. But yeah, those of you not on Facebook, I'll put it in the show notes so you can see it. Or maybe to the blog. On the blog with Sunset Pictures. I'll put it somewhere. Anywho, as I was saying, oh, you know, I um was slow on the first hour, and for some reason the third hour was slow. My hero in this book um overthinks everything, and it makes me overthink when I'm writing, which is kind of funny. Um, but I had like 200 words still to go, and I got those in 10 minutes. I grabbed them, you know, after Dorinda and I signed off. Um, yeah, 10 minutes I got my 200 words. If I always got 200 words in 10 minutes, I think my life would be easier. Um, but it does always work that way. But it led to a conversation that Dorinda and I were having about fast drafting, that a lot of people love fast drafting. And Leslie Penelope was talking about fast drafting on her podcast, and I may have touched on this some yesterday, but Leslie has um she does like 20-minute sprints. I write for an hour at a time because an hour really lets me sink into the story, and some of that is uh because I'm a because I write for discovery, a pantser. I don't like that word. But yeah, 20 minutes would not be enough for me to to really sink into the story. It's too disruptive. I've actually tried it when I was like sprinting with other people. An hour for me has a very solid amount of time, so I work for an hour, and Leslie does her sprint for 20 minutes, and we're getting essentially the same number of words because Leslie mentioned that she gets a thousand words in 20 minutes. And I mentioned that to Dorinda because I was like, I don't think it's physically possible for me to write a thousand words in 20 minutes. And Dorinda said, well, she's done it. She's tried that fast drafting, and she said the problem for her is that it's almost incoherent. She said it's pretty much like a stream of consciousness to write that fast, and that she'll spend a couple of days fixing it. She said, at least hours, if not days, fixing what she wrote in that fast drafting amount of time. And it's like, okay, well, I think that's what it would be for me. So I can see why people like it if it's a huge obstacle for you to get over the barrier of putting words on the page. If if you can't, if if that's a block for you, getting words on the page, then I can see fast drafting at that speed could be useful. And I can see how it's seductive to be like, oh yeah, I got you know thousands of words today. But it would not work for me because I like to have, I I mean, I I really do, I can't I can't think of another way to phrase it. I write the story as I go, I create the story as I go. And and as I mentioned that Leslie and I were talking about when I interviewed her, and she said that my story's pretty polished when I'm done, and hers is not. I I think that probably is very true, that mine is much more polished. I don't have to um go over it a lot. So I think that the answer is that you have to find that speed that works for you. You know, and something that people will say to me frequently is especially when they find out that I don't pre-plot, that I, you know, and I don't pre-plot because I can't. I I can't come up with an outline before I write a book. I don't know how my books end. Um you know, and people will say, yes, well, I can see that it's like faster to write that way because you're not spending a lot of time pre-plotting, but I bet you do a lot of revising. You do a lot of revising then. And I I feel like this is a um something that people say to to soothe themselves, because that's the trade, that's supposed to be the trade-off, right? You know, that if you invest a whole bunch of time up front in outlining and pre-plotting, then you don't have to do the work on the back end. Um, but I don't do a huge amount of revising. Um occasionally, my traditionally published books, my editor asks me to move stuff around, and then that takes more effort. But it is not a massive revision where I'm spending, you know, maybe you could look at proportion, proportion of time. That you know, it generally takes me um 55 to 65 working days to write a novel, and usually in the neighborhood of 10 working days to revise. Uh and I could see that if you are writing 10,000 words a day, then you could maybe write an entire novel in 10 to 12 days, but then what would your proportion be? I mean, let's let's figure that out, since you guys know I love my spreadsheets. So let's see, if I'm doing am I gonna be able to do this? I need my keyboard. Okay, so let's see. 10 working days divided by I don't often use this. Well, we'll do this. 10 working days and let's say 65 days to write. You guys who are good at math are probably way ahead of me. So 10 divided by 65. So it's about 0.15 proportion. And let's see if let's say that you I was gonna copy this formula. It's not easy to copy that formula. This is the tablet, you know. I'm using the tablet function on the laptop. It's one that has the touch screen. I'm still not great at this. Okay, so let's say um instead of 65 working days, let's call it 12 10,000 word days. Come on. And then how long to revise? That would be the question. So if let's say we were doing a 10,000-word day for 12 working days, get us 120,000 word draft. Um I guess I'm gonna trip up on my equation here because I have no idea how long that would take to revise like that. But let's say if Dorinda said it took her like two working days to do just a thousand words, so I'm gonna have to do more math here. Okay, so a hundred and twenty thousand. And okay, so then divided by a thousand, so that would be a hundred and twenty days. Okay, that's what we'll do. Call it 120 days. Yeah, then your proportion ends up coming out. I should do four-bat painter on this. Dang it. I don't like using the touch screen, can you tell? Yeah, as opposed to 0.15, you have 10 is your proportion. So, I mean, I think everybody has to decide where they work best, and I know some people feel much better revising than working, but I don't know. I would just evaluate the value of fast drafting to you then, if you're ending up having to spend that much time going over it. It reminds me of when with this podcast that I tried doing the transcription because I really wanted to be able to do the transcription for the hearing impaired. And I tried it because everybody was like, oh, you know, the AI is so great now, you know, it works, it's it's like magic, you know, and you barely have to edit it at all. And my and I thought, well, my podcast is like 15-20 minutes. How hard could it be? It was hard. I ended up spending an hour or two editing my transcript, and some of it is because uh I couldn't let go of the writer brain, and the way I talk, transcribed onto the page, was so it offended my sensibilities because I changed topic mid-sentence all the time. And you know, I can hear myself do it. I get part way through something and I alter course and I circle back, and it I hope it works okay listening. But writing it out to read it, it was horrible. Oh, you know, and so I would end up fixing it, and that's why I always wonder if that's what fast drafting is like. So, anyway, um, I don't know what other news I have for you. I've I kind of rambled on a long time about fast drafting more than I meant to, but oh, I said I had a busy day because I'm going to be at some of the readers and readers events this afternoon, participating in the scavenger hunt this evening. And then tomorrow I will be on a panel with the Under a Winter Sky ladies. Um, I'll accept Grace, Grace Draven couldn't join us, but I'll be there with Kelly Armstrong, Melissa Marr, and Leslie Penelope. It's at 5 Eastern time. So if you are thinking about, if you are registered for Readers and Readers, or if you're thinking about it, uh come and join us. That should be fun. And yeah, and then I have like other Cepha things to do this weekend. The good news is we've just about got the Nebula showcase out. So for those of you, I don't know if any of my listeners are really looking for that, but that will be out next few days. And the other thing I have to do is get the print version of Under a Winter Sky set up, because we have everything ready for that now. So that'll be cool, huh? All right, so because I do want to get my hour in before I uh writing before the software board meeting, I am going to sign off. But I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend. I hope that you do some relaxing things and some um creatively fulfilling things, right? And don't watch the news. Uh I'll remind you that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network, and you will find more podcasts you love at frolic.media slash podcasts. And I will talk to you all on Monday. Bye bye.
