Saturday, September 12, 2020

Pulp Speed

Pulp Speed - as far as I know - is a term coined by Dean Wesley Smith.

Pulp Speed One: 1.000.000 original words in a year. 2740 words a day every day
Pulp Speed Two: 1.200.000 original words in a year. 3288 words a day every day
Pulp Speed Three: 1.400.000 original words in a year. 3836 words a day every day
Pulp Speed Four: 1.600.000 original words in a year. 4384 words a day every day
Pulp Speed Five: 1.800.000 original words in a year. 4932 words a day every day
Pulp Speed Six: 2.000.000 original words in a year. 5450 words a day every day

Let's say you write 1000 words in an hour, and have ordinary working weeks, that's five eight hours days, you'll produce 40.000 words in a week. If you work 50 weeks in a year, that's 2.000.000 words in a year. Pulp Speed Six.

Ok... so... my typewriting speed is about 70 words a minute. If I could keep the speed up for an hour, and if I managed to keep telling the story for an hour, I would produce 4200 words per hour. Now, I can't, and I don't think anyone can. But it would be interesting to find out for how long I could keep it up, and how much a good outline would help... I mean, if I could keep the speed up for 15 minutes, I would write the 1000 words in 15 minutes, and then I could take 5 minutes pause, and come back and write another 15 minutes and another 1000 words... If I can write 2000 words in an hour instead of 1000 words, then I could work with brainstorming, planning, outlining, and thinking about the story the other 4 hours of the day, which would make it possible to just "stream of consciousness" for fifteen minutes twice in an hour... that would make active writing time 2 hours in stead of 4 hours, and it's quite possible to think about your story when you do other things like household chores, exercise, etc.

How I write 10,000 Words in a Day, and You Can Too


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