Although he was not entirely serious at the time, Cyril Northcote Parkinson once declared one of life’s truisms- “The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource.”
What does this mean?
Well, let me give two examples:
1) If you only have $10 for food that week, you will find a way to make do with $10 worth of food, but if you have $100 you will spend $100 on food that week even if you could have made do with $10.
2) If you say you have one day to get a project done, it will get done in one day. If you say the same project will take a week, it will take you a week to get it done.
Because of many factors, be it laziness, practicality, or procrastination, it’s just human nature to make maximum use of resources like money or time for our own convenience, even if using them more wisely might bring us long-term benefits. Maybe it’s a side-effect of short-term thinking, or our selfish natures, but this is a problem that keeps popping up again and again, and often we let this side of ourselves keep us from doing what we want to do. This is what’s known as Parkinson’s Law.
I’ll give you an example (the one which got me thinking about this topic)- National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) is a month where would-be writers are encouraged to pump out a 50,000 word novel (or 50,000 words of a novel) in an effort to force themselves to write. It creates a time limit, sets a clear goal, and forces writers (who are horrible procrastinators) to actually commit to using that month to produce the book they’ve always wanted to write. The idea is that 1,667 words a day (50,000 roughly divided by 31) is an easily achievable goal for almost any writer, even one with a day job, and if they just reach that goal consistently for 31 days they’ve got their book finished!
It’s a great idea, and for many people it works. It gets butts in seats and words on the screen, and overcomes many of the hurdles that writers tend to find themselves facing in an effort to make their dreams into reality. But, what really made me think was what writer Matt Ahlschlager did- he finished NaNoWriMo in 1 day! In fact, he did it in less than a day, while bogging about it as he went, and this November he did it 3 times!
So why does it take other writers 31 days? Yes, Matt is a fast typer, but couldn’t most people carve out a weekend (2 whole days) and produce a book, especially if they wrote “Chinese Style”?
Isn’t this just an example of Parkinson’s Law in effect? Writers give themselves 31 days, so it takes 31 days, but it doesn’t HAVE to. Writer Michael Moorcock wrote an essay called “How to Write a Book in 3 Days“, and it outlines exactly how to write a book in one weekend. Even most professional writers (the prolific ones) often talk about writing a novel in 2-3 weeks at most, and author Rachel Aaron discusses how to do it in one week by writing 10,000 words a day. It can be done.
Think about it- if you had 2 days to write a 50,000 word novel or pay a $100,000 penalty, could you do it? I bet you could. I bet most people with at least some writing talent could, especially if given a bit of preparation.
So why don’t you?
Every book you write is a potential “lottery ticket” which could actually make you $100,000 (in the long run, if it sells well) and the more stories you write, the better your chances are of writing that winning book. So why are you capable of that kind of productivity only if it’s penalty? Why can’t you do it as a reward? (Yes, I know, one is certain, and one is a gamble, but if you don’t write anything you’re guaranteed to make nothing from it.)
It’s this thinking that got me wondering about how writers could find ways to use Parkinson’s Law to their advantage. If this is a part of human nature, how can we “hack” it to benefit ourselves as writers and make ourselves more productive and profitable in the process?
So let’s explore this “law” and see what it can do for our creativity. When I have time, I’m going to write a series of posts on this topic, and my thoughts on how we can benefit from it.
First up- TIME!
Rob
I’m always amazed by L. Ron Hubbard (before he went into the whole religion thing). The guy regularly ripped off a 150,000 word novel ON A WEEKEND. He wrote so quickly, he had to use an experimental typewriter because he kept jamming the standard ones.
You can argue quality later.. in the end, it was successful.
That’s pretty astounding, but I actually believe it. There are a few freaks of nature who can type almost as fast as they can talk or think, and if he’s one of those lucky people who only need like 4 hours sleep a night, he’d be a writing machine!
Rob
Like I said, as a writer I’m impressed. He made up three different pseudonyms because he didn’t have any publisher believe he could write as much as he did. It was all pulp. But he delved into pretty much any genre including Westerns, Mysteries, Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Detective, and Air Adventure. 🙂
You mention “given a bit of preparation” in your post, but don’t include it in your descriptions of words per day. I think you should include it. I suspect that genre writing is easier, for it allows for less planning, more formulaic writing. That’s why romance writers can produce more than 10 novels per year. Writing outside of a genre, or even on the fringes of a genre, I would expect it to take longer. Even different genres may have different amounts of planning involved. For example, the conspiracy genre must be mapped out in its entirety before a single word is written. The difference isn’t in the time it takes to write the words, it’s in the time it takes to plan the story.