Q&A: What’s the most you’ve ever written in a day?

Anonymous asked:

What’s the most you’ve ever written in a day?

I’m going to tell you a little story about The Perfect Day.

It was in December 2005. I was home sick with the flu, or at least that’s what I’d told my boss. I don’t actually remember if I was sick or not, only that I’d called in sick, and given my work ethic in 2005, it could go either way.

(Oh, who am I kidding? It was more like 60/40, in favor of lazy over sick.)

Anyway, I was home and in pajamas and I managed to crank out something like 45 pages. 

It was kind of awesome.

But of course when you have a day like that, you kind of start using it as a stick by which to measure all other days. And so, almost ten years later, I find myself thinking back to that day and wonder what I did right then and what I’m doing wrong now.

The answer, of course, is that I did nothing “right’ then and I’m doing nothing “wrong” now. There are so many factors involved in that freakshow of a day, factors that will probably never align again. But still my subconscious won’t let it go. 

So there’s your answer. Most words in a day: 45 pages. 

But it’s also worth noting that those 45 pages? Complete and utterly useless. They got deleted on a first pass edit. I’m sure there was something I learned from those 45 pages that eventually found its way into the book. But the pages themselves? Not so perfect after all.