Born To Write

I am sitting here thinking about the fact that I have written 60 books over the past 30 years. That’s an average of two books a year, and I have no memory of when or how I did that. Each book takes about six months to write, some less, some more. That does not include the edits and re-writes that come back once the book is finished and sent in, so it’s a constant procedure of writing, reading, editing, writing, reading, editing, writing …

I have written a minimum of SIX MILLION words, based on 60 books at 100,000 words. However, most of my books ranged closer to 120,000 words, so I’d better up that to a total of SEVEN MILLION, TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND words. And again, that’s just first drafts. And it doesn’t count all the blogs and magazine articles and proposals I have written over the years. And of course there is the research, probably thousands of hours of research. I have hundreds of research books in my personal library, and I have read pretty much every one of them. They are all filled with highlights, underlining, hand-written notes and dog-eared pages. I don’t remember when I did all that either.