Fast Writing Or Slow Writing

One of the arguments that the author community seems to always have is,"What is better: to write a novel quickly or to write it slowly?"

I hate this argument more than most arguments, even though I, like many other authors, always participate in it because it's an argument authors get heated about because of their egos. It's never logical or calm, it's always emotional. Because whether we write fast or slow, we feel like, defines us as authors and the quality of all of our books.

Some of us take our time to write a novel and try to perfect it because we're perfectionists. Other people write as quickly as possible to please their fans and get things done. Different people have different priorities when they write.

Also, they are at different levels in their writing. Some people have to learn and research more when writing a specific book so it takes them longer to write or they're beginners and need to go through more drafts. Some people have a team of people they pay that help them write a novel quickly and are ready to edit it the second they are finished. Having a dedicated team and more resources allows a writer to write something faster.

The faster you write, the more money you can make. That tends to be true across the board.

But which kind of books have actually superior literary quality? Ask that question and authors fall to pieces arguing with each other about it.

I can write both quickly or slow depending on my mood. I prefer to write slower (although that isn't always possible) because I'm one of those perfectionist types and want to catch every single mistake, but I'm trying to write more quickly lately and have, for the most part, been doing so under other pen names and writing my articles/poetry/regularly updating my website.

But I do think deep down inside that taking your time writing something and reading it over and over extra times actually helps you catch more mistakes than you would otherwise catch.

Anyway, when authors have this argument, both sides wind up getting offended. The fast authors wind up getting offended because they feel like the slow authors are saying they write crappy, low quality books and the slow authors feel like the fast authors are saying they are crap writers because they take forever to write the same quality book that fast authors write quickly. And we wind up never actually arguing over which type of writing is better, we wind up defending our own egos.

This is similar to the argument I get into with certain romance writers. I say a romance book is any book in which the main plotline revolves around a romance. But a lot of romance writers say there's a lot of rules to it. That both characters must be respectable people with a healthy relationship (if you don't believe me, then look up the controversy over a book called "The Wild"), that there must be a happily ever after in the end, that the romance must progress a certain way, and give people the warm fuzzies or whatever. But I say that some people are triggered by a lot of romance novels, that they don't like alpha males, like me, I don't tend to like an alpha male.

But when I say that, it gets all about egos. They think I hate their type of writing even though I read it all the time and just think it shouldn't be the only type of writing in existence. And they think that I'm trashing the romance genre and debasing it if I dare to write something that doesn't fit their mold. And then it gets about their egos because they think I'm hating on their writing and non-conforming romance writers egos because they're being kicked out of the genre by other authors.

I just hate these arguments and authors have them over and over again with each other. They're all about egos and not about anything actually real or good or helpful. It's just insecure authors trying to defend themselves and no one actually learning anything.

We may not compete over reviews or rankings usually (at least not from my experience.) But these things, it seems like even the littlest authors compete over.