Thursday, July 20
Christopher Moore on writing...
Describe your typical writing day.
I usually get up about 6:30, make coffee, then go down to my office. I write until 11:00, then I answer mail, make phone calls, pay bills, stuff like that until about 2:00 when I go to the gym. I goof off for a few hours, eat dinner, then I read research and work on notes in the evening. If I'm lucky, I'll figure out what I'll be writing the next morning. I've tried working longer hours, but it seems that I can't be funny that many hours of the day. I'm a little envious of authors who can crank out ten or twenty pages a day. I've done it, but I end up throwing most of it out the next day.
How long does it take you to write a book?
It takes me 12 months to do the actual writing of the manuscript, and another six to research it. I've written books in less time, and taken more time on others, but the average is 12 months.
Do you do a lot of rewriting?
Almost none, and I've been fortunate that my editors have liked what I turned in. I did rewrite some of the beginning of Love Nun and Coyote Blue because the main characters were sort of harsh. These are both redemption stories where the main character would go through a major change as the story went on, I tended to overwrite the negative, which made the characters hard to sympathize with in the beginning. With the exception of copy editing (spelling and stuff) most of my books have gone into print almost as the first draft. My editors have asked me to change perhaps four lines per book. I think this is due to the fact that I write so slowly. If I were writing a first draft in a month like some authors do, I'd be doing a ton of rewriting. Method has a lot to do with my lack of rewriting -- and what's a draft anymore anyway? With word processing you back out so many phrases that might have ended up in a draft in the days of type writers.
Do you outline?
I usually know where the story starts and where it ends before I start, but I don't usually know "how" I'm going to get to the ending. I try to stay about five scenes ahead of where I am currently writing (this is the work I do in the evening). I have some scenes finished before I start the book and they just plug in at a certain point. I did outline the last half of Lust Lizard because I had a really tight deadline and I couldn't afford to miss a day if I got stuck.
