How Many Books Are in Me? A Speculation.

Given my well-known tendency toward procrastination, I came to an unsurprising conclusion sometime around the beginning of this decade: I was not going to be able to write as many books as my man Stephen King.

I’m OK with that. There’s people like King who have banged out tons of books, and those who have written even more like James Patterson and William W. Johnston, among others. Then, of course, you have the example of Harper Lee and her one (two) books, including To Kill a Mockingbird.

I’d like to have a production level somewhere in between that of King and Lee. Exactly where in between them is another issue.

As you heard before (man, look at all of the time I have to write during the summers 🙂 ), there are currently five novels that I have in various states of completion/revision/hidden from the world because they were too stupid to see the light of day. After that, there may be about five stories that I might want to get done – including some possible sequels to some of my previous works and at least one epic tale of a fictional indie rock band from the 1980’s-1990’s and their improbable rise to notoriety…

Then, of course, there are about… how many? Five, seven? Maybe eight… fever dreams of books, ideas of stories that flew around in my head for a while.

What happened to them? Some of them went past their due date, ideas that sounded good in the days I started playing with them in my head, but after looking at them on the initial pages didn’t seem so strong. Others were fevered teenage dreams that just seemed too small when I finally thought about them. Then there was that story about a presidential candidate that seemed to fit the turn of the millennium than the current climate. But, maybe that could get revived; I would love to write the Primary Colorsfor the 20th century.

I don’t like to think took much about the future, but I do wonder at times. If I’m lucky, I might have anywhere from 30 to 40 years of mileage left. If I’m lucky and good, I could turn out a book every 18 months at my current pace (as long as it picks up). If I’m only slightly unlucky, maybe that could be a dozen, 15 books?

I think that is one of the reasons I started this blog, because I realize that I’m not guaranteed any amount of time on this planet and I might use whatever time I have to create something interesting.

What I do know is that I will keep on writing. I also don’t think I’m going to be running out of ideas, either. At least, not for a while to come.