How long does it take to write book 7 WAS: Re: The Redemption of LV?

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 155161

> >Eggplant wrote:
> > We can only hope it's just a year, it could easily be 2 or even 3. It
> > takes longer to write a book than to read one, I wish it didn't.
> >
> >
>
> Sandy replied:
>
> And it takes even longer to write a book when you're not actually
writing it
> but instead are busy attending social functions and globe-trotting.
Oh, and
> doing interviews that miserably tease and taunt those who are so
eagerly
> waiting.
>
>

Ken:

I understand your frustration, Sandy. Certainly we all feel it and
wish she would stop talking about it and get on with it. Writers have
to do things their own way. Some turn out decent to great copy at
blinding speed. Others have to stop often and smell the roses a lot to
get the inspiration they need. I suspect we would all rather have it
be good than now, though none of us would mind having both!

I'm also reading Harry Turtledove's alternate history of 19th and 20th
century North America and volume 10 of the saga, "The Grapple", is due
out in a few days so I will have something new to distract me from HP
for a brief while. He's been spinning out a new episode at the rate of
over one a year. And he writes several other ongoing series and
one-off books at the same time. The man is amazing. I don't think his
writing is as good as JKR's but it isn't bad, not bad at all. I have
to wonder what his so called TL-191 "history" of NA would have been
like if he took more time or concentrated on it exclusively. I guess
the thing is that like any writer his mind works the way it does and
he couldn't do it at all if he couldn't do it his way.

His polar opposite would be someone like Susanna Clarke the author of
"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell". I believe she took around 10 years
to write that single, hefty novel. It has been called HP for adults
because it is also about English magicians and it depicts adults, not
school children. Anyone here who has not read it ought to give it a
try. It is a delightful book and it will give you a much different
view of English magic as well as provide something to read while
waiting for HP7. In a way it is an alternate history too. Its plot
also turns on a prophecy, one I found to be much better done that
Trelawney's, sorry to say. It begs for a sequel and no telling how
long that might be in coming.

JKR is somewhere between those two extremes. I doubt that the
distractions you mention are really delaying the progress of the last
novel. She undoubtedly needs them to let ideas percolate in her
unconscious creative mind. This electical engineer finds that his best
ideas often come not while reading technical journals or while trying
alternatives on a computerized circuit simulator but while taking a
morning shower. Creativity springs on most of us unawares. Let's just
pray that she doesn't hit a block and take multiple years to write the
last one.

Ken