Avi

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Q&A: Language and Word Count

As I con­tin­ue to answer the ques­tions I am most often asked, I’ve been giv­en two more questions.

Ques­tion one: “Do you work to write the way the peo­ple spoke in the past?”

This is actu­al­ly a com­plex ques­tion. The answer, sim­ply put, is that it depends on the con­text of the book I am try­ing to write. Con­sid­er, I do write in Eng­lish. But if I am writ­ing an his­tor­i­cal nov­el set in 14th Cen­tu­ry Eng­land, (say Crispin) as con­trast­ed with one set in 18th Cen­tu­ry Eng­land (The End of the World and Beyond) or 19th Cen­tu­ry Eng­land (The Traitor’s Gate) the his­tor­i­cal Eng­lish spo­ken will dif­fer. There is very lit­tle 19th Cen­tu­ry Eng­lish we could not under­stand. 14th Cen­tu­ry Eng­lish would be, for the most part, gib­ber­ish. I don’t want to write in such a way that my read­ers will be dis­cour­aged from read­ing the book. There­fore, I try to use a few words from the time peri­od to give some flavor—so to speak—as to how the lan­guage was used.

Ques­tion two: “Do you work with a dai­ly word count quo­ta in mind? Do you work on oth­er projects simultaneously?”

I am an ear­ly ris­er, and as I sit before the com­put­er, cup of cof­fee near to hand at 7 AM, I am try­ing to decide what I am going to accom­plish that day. Rewrite chap­ter 5? Get on with the unwrit­ten chap­ter 36? Go through the whole book, rewrit­ing as I read? So no, no dai­ly quo­ta. But always there is a gen­er­al dead­line loom­ing on the not-so-dis­tant hori­zon. I do need to sub­mit a book by then. I work con­stant­ly toward that goal. No sur­prise, some days I am more suc­cess­ful than oth­ers. Call it an annu­al quota.

As to simul­ta­ne­ous projects, the answer is yes. Thus when I sub­mit the draft of the book I am cur­rent­ly try­ing to fin­ish, there will be time (more or less) before I hear from my edi­tor. Dur­ing that time I will be work­ing on anoth­er book. Thus, at this par­tic­u­lar moment, I am try­ing to fin­ish the first draft of book A, wait­ing for proofs of book B, work­ing with an edi­tor to final­ize the book cov­er design for book C, research­ing the next project, Book D. In short, I am always work­ing on something.

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