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You know what? I wanna talk about this a little more.
(I know, I know, big shock. But.) I am a distressingly fast writer. I write like a college student being paid to produce fanfic for a new archive site: every day, very quickly, reasonably cleanly. My process is "start at 1, continue until you hit 100, return to start."
I stopped giving my daily word count a long time ago, because a) people assumed I was bragging when I wasn't, and b) people were saying it made them feel bad about their own writing.
And this is not, in fiction-land, a race! Maybe it is in journalism or academic publishing, where you literally have to get there first if you want the byline, but I lie for money! I can do that at any pace!
I process trauma through disassociation. That is literally how I have always functioned. If something bad happens, I write. If something incomprehensible happens, I write.
I have cats instead of children, because I never wanted children, and this makes it easier for me to write. I got very lucky with the timing on a few of my books (skill can't make success, you need some luck for that), and I get to write full-time, which also makes it easier.
My mother lives with me, rent-free, in exchange for cleaning and doing basic household chores, so I don't have to, which also makes it easier to write. I get to be Walden, without the raging mysogyny and erasure of my privileges.
But me having more time to write books doesn't suddenly mean the rest of the world has more time to edit them. If I finish 2021's Toby book by the end of July, it still won't be released until September 2021.
Presenting it as "if authors really cared about their craft, we'd get books faster" erases huge swaths of work, and huge swaths of privilege. It's inherently sexist and classist, and doesn't account for the fact that we're individuals, with different natural working speeds.
I have friends who have lost all child care, and it's impacting their work. I have friends who are being forced to leave their homes every day to work, sometimes without being allowed to wear masks, and it's impacting their work.
And yes, people in my position exist, but the majority are going to be male, childfree, white, able-bodied, and financially stable. Holding them (us) up as an ideal that can be aspired to is unrealistic.
And it's mean.
We can be less mean.
We can be less mean.
