Cult of Dan Brown: Reaching Dan Brown

Have no fear, Sephia, their works will get published...eventually

The trouble is that writing is not a 9-to-5, 40-hour-a-week occupation, so it's difficult to judge how long it will take to finish a book. Writers don't always (or often) wake up in the morning filled with words ready to be disgorged on paper, and when their creative muses abandon them, they can go for weeks or months (and in some cases years) without progress. In extreme cases, a writer may shelve a project entirely, hoping to pick it up again at some point in the future when she has a better idea of where to go with it.

Ernest Hemingway had an interesting routine in that regard. He had his office in a second-story room in a back-building accessible only via a narrow catwalk (without railings) connected to his bedroom. This ensured that he could only enter his office when he was sober, and that he would have very few interruptions--no phone in that office, and few guests willing to risk the fall. His routine consisted of starting work at 8am every day, and giving himself four hours to see if the words would come to him. If he was having a productive day, he'd remain in his office until late at night sometimes, not wanting to let his muse get away. Most days, however, he had to concede by noon with less than a page of new material, and retired to the bar across the street from his house to lose himself in booze for the rest of the day.

Now if you contact your favourite author's publisher or agent, you'll hear that "she's hard at work on her next novel," which might give you the impression she's under house-arrest with an ankle bracelet, committed to turning in a chapter a day (or week). In fact, if you were to track her down, you'd be as likely to find her touring the wine country of France, or trying desperately to get her World of Warcraft warlock to level 60. Not every escape has to be productive; sometimes the mind just needs to plug itself back into the charging unit for a while before it's ready to use again. Ask anyone who's suffered from clinical depression what it's like when the brain "runs out of gas."

On the other hand, there are truly magical days as well--days that in my case seem to happen on those rare occasions when I get a sleep surplus and wake up feeling truly energized. On days like that, the ideas and words come easily, and you just want to get as much on paper as you can, not knowing how long this inspirational conduit to your muse will remain open. It's tempting to work all day and well into the night, defying tiredness as long as possible out of a fear that you'll wake up the next morning to find that your muse has moved on. Creativity like that seems to come in small but potent doses for many writers, which is one reason writers are said to make poor spouses and worse company--when the muse is in the house, the phone is off the hook and all other plans get put on hold

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In the end, then, if it takes Dan Brown three years to write his next novel, remember that the actual writing part probably accounts for less than 10% of that time. He and his publisher would love to tell you that the other 90% gets spent on "research," and I'm sure that's what he tells the IRS when he books travel vacations, but I strongly suspect that, as with most writers, most of that time is spent in the contemplation of his navel (or some functional equivalent)

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