ARTICLE: 5 Quick Books

I suspect this article is a bit disingenuous as they all most certainly did quite a bit of editing after their first draft but still quite interesting.

From the January 2012 Wired Magazine...

Speedy Scribes: The Price 5 Writers Paid for Flash Fiction
By Dave Mosher

Self-aggrandizing blowhards and undergraduate creative writing workshops have convinced the world that penning a novel is slow, painstaking, life-consuming work. Tell that to Sara Gruen. Inspired by National Novel Writing Month, a net-based challenge to pound out 50,000 words in 30 days, Gruen produced a first draft of her novel in just four weeks. That book? Water for Elephants, a number-one best seller that became a hit movie.

Gruen’s breakneck speed isn’t unique. Notable authors throughout history have compressed the years-long hardship of novel-writing into a few weeks—or even days. Many of the speedy scribes earned boatloads of cash from their efforts (those jerks). But speed ain’t cheap: Working that quickly invariably takes a toll.

A Clockwork Orange

England lacked a dystopian vision. Anthony Burgess lacked cash. After three weeks of work, our droog rectified the situation.
Pace: 2,785 words/day
Price: An albatross. As Burgess himself wrote: “The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate.”
On the Road

Jack Kerouac typed his epic beatnik adventure on a 120-foot-long roll of paper in 20 days. Legend has it that he was hopped up on Benzedrine, but it was actually just coffee.
Pace: 5,770 words/day
Price: No time for punctuation!
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this in less than a week, inspired by a nightmare.
Pace: 4,343 words/day
Price: A bruised ego. Stevenson burned his first draft after his wife critiqued it.
Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury had two noisy kids in his tiny home, so he rented a typewriter in the UCLA library for 10 cents an hour. The ticking meter spurred him to write this classic in nine frantic days.
Pace: 5,086 words/day
Price: As one New York Times critic put it, “This is no precisely designed work of fiction.”
The Snow Was Black

Georges Simenon churned out each of his 75 Inspector Maigret novels in less than two weeks. The Snow Was Black sold 850,000 copies in the US.
Pace: 3,640 words/day
Price: Simenon wrote in French and had no time to certify the English versions, resulting in some clunky translations. (“He was shiny. He was always shiny.”)