The Black Dagger Brotherhood_ An Insider's Guide - J. R. Ward [92]
Were all these days stellar examples of drafting at its finest? Absolutely not. I can write crap just like everyone else does sometimes. But I keep after it and rework it and just hammer away until the words feel right. Often, it’s slow going, and tedious. When I’m laying down a first draft, I can do only about six to ten pages a day. When I revise those pages, the first trip through is usually no more than ten pages a day. Then it’s fifteen. Then it’s twenty. After my editor reads the manuscript, I’ll go through it again and again, doing no more than twenty-five pages a day. If I’m hitting copy edits, maybe I’ll do forty. For galleys? It’s hard for me to do more than fifty or seventy-five.
The thing is, I don’t write fast, I write long—which means I just put the hours in.
My normal day starts when I get to the computer upstairs around eight. I write for two hours. Take a break to make more coffee (during which I sometimes check e-mail downstairs), then go back up for another two hours. After that I run and come back and spend the rest of the day editing and dealing with business-related stuff. This all changes, however, if I’m under deadline—which means nothing except a run takes me away from the computer.
I do not have Internet access on either computer I write on, and I strongly urge folks, if they can afford the luxury, to draw that line and keep Web and e-mail distraction far, far, far away from their writing machines. See, for me, the writing uses a very specific part of my brain. If I stop working to deal with other issues, it can be a struggle to get back to the zone I was in before I put on my business head.
No one goes up into my working space except my dog (who’s always welcome) and my husband (who’s usually welcome). I don’t describe it anywhere, and there are no pictures of it. I will say that it is extremely uncluttered and has a tremendous amount of light. I think part of the reason I’m so territorial about the physical space is that keeping the real world out helps me to focus on what’s in my head. I’m also by nature, as I said, rather private, and the writing is very personal to me—so I’m quite protective of it.
In addition to my agent and my editor (and all the spectacular folks at my publisher’s who are incredible), I work with a lot of absolutely amazing people. My personal assistant makes sure everything runs smoothly and keeps me in line by being thoroughly unimpressed by any of the J. R. Ward stuff and liking me for me (well, most of the time it’s about our friendship—sometimes I drive her insane and she stays only because she loves my dog). My research assistant is a walking, talking Brotherhood encyclopedia who can find obscure pieces of knowledge and know-how with amazing alacrity—he’s also endlessly patient with me and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I also have a six-foot-ten-inch consigliere with a metal fetish—because everyone who writes about vampires needs one of those—and a woman who, even when six months pregnant, is willing to hump bags around hotel lobbies and go to conferences and make sure the trains run on time (we call her the APA).
My critique partner, Jessica Andersen (who writes fabulous paranormals), and I met like eight years ago, and we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs (the downs are what we call roadkill periods). She writes plot-driven stories and I’m into character sketches, so we don’t have a thing in common when it comes to material—which is one of the reasons I think we work so well together. I call her my CP, but because I don’t really share my content much, she’s more like a brain trust. I run a lot of business as well as writing issues by her, and she never fails to give me good advice.
My two assistants run the J. R. Ward message boards