The Millions: How prolific is too prolific?

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April 22, 2005

How prolific is too prolific?

There's a very entertaining article at the CBC Web site about the pros and cons of being prolific as a writer. It leads with a discussion of the output of Alexander McCall Smith of No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency fame, who regularly churns out 3,000 words at a sitting. Prolific authors are often envied, but if they happen to be genre writers they are likely to be derided as well, even as publishers covet them and count on them to bankroll riskier publishing endeavors:

The dream of most publishers is to have at least one "house author," a writer with a robust fan base who can dependably churn out one title a year - giving the publisher the financial solidity to take the occasional flyer on more challenging (read: less gainful) authors.

The article also includes a great quote from DFW:

Musing on the seemingly inexhaustible John Updike, David Foster Wallace once asked, "Has the son-of-a-bitch ever had one unpublished thought?" Updike's absurdly prodigious output - in the form of novels, as well as short stories, travel writing and literary criticism - has undermined his stature in the eyes of Foster Wallace, as well as many fiction readers.

I would tend to agree that volume can degrade one's reputation in the eyes of the reader. The article goes on to mention Joyce Carol Oates whose level of output many seem to take as a personal insult, and closes with an amusing comparison of Oates and Stephen King courtesy George Murray, proprietor of Bookninja.

Curious about the output of different writers? This search returns lots of interesting numbers.

- C. Max Magee @ 2:02 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post