Kirjoitusvinkit » Kirjan kirjoittaminen » Sanamäärä
Kuinka monta sanaa kirjailijat kirjoittavat päivässä?
Entä millaisia ajatuksia kirjoitustyö heissä herättää?
100, 300, 500, enemmän?
Vaikka sanojen määrällä ei tule kilpailla, luvut voivat rohkaista ja inspiroida istahtamaan näppäimistön ääreen, tottakai myös kirjoittamaan paperille.
Mutta kuinka monta sanaa maailman kuuluisimmat kirjailijat sitten kirjoittavat päivässä?
Luku vaihtelee suuresti, sillä myös kirjoitettu kieli vaikuttaa sanojen määrään: sama lause voi olla englanniksi lyhyt ja suomeksi todella pitkä.
Alla olevasta listaukseta näet 45 kirjailijan päivittäisen sanamäärän, johon he pyrkivät tai josta he eivät tahdo lipsua, vaikka virke katkeaisi kesken sanan.
Kuten tulet huomaamaan, monien maailmanluokan kirjailijoiden sanamäärät riittäisivät marraskuussa starttaavaan NaNoWriMo-haasteeseen. Kenties haluaisit osallistua siihen?
Tom Wolfe: 135 sanaa
Wolfe ei suotta kiirehtinyt; 370 000 sanan mittainen A Man in Full otti yksitoista vuotta valmistuakseen.
Ernest Hemingway: tasan 500 sanaa
Ei enempää eikä vähempää; virke sai vaikka loppua kesken kaiken.
“…Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.”
Graham Greene: tasan 500 sanaa
Ei enempää eikä vähempää; virke sai hänelläkin vaikka loppua kesken kaiken.
“I have always been very methodical, and when my quota of work is done I break off, even in the middle of a scene.”
Michael Robotham: 500 sanaa
“Writing is what I do. It’s what makes me tick. I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they’ll resonate with you for a few days, where you’ll remember the characters and the story.”
Shelby Foote: 500 sanaa
“I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.”
Ian McEwan: 600 sanaa
“I aim for about six hundred words a day and hope for at least a thousand when I’m on a roll.”
Arthur Hailey: 600 sanaa
“I set myself 600 words a day as a minimum output, regardless of the weather, my state of mind or if I’m sick or well. There must be 600 finished words – not almost right words.”
Carol Shields: 600 sanaa
“Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve. Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.”
Kate DiCamillo: 600–900 sanaa
“My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I’m always glad that I have done it.”
Holly Black: 1000 sanaa
“Three hundred words in a day is not a lot. So much of it is thinking before writing. And then there’s the cutting.”
Barbara Kingsolver: 1000 sanaa
“I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit.”
Sophie Kinsella: 1000 sanaa
“The way I write is totally instinctive. I just write what I feel or what I find funny – and hope everyone else agrees.”
John van de Ruit: 1000 sanaa
“Get rid of your romantic notions of what writing is. It’s like climbing a mountain; not sprinting.”
Sarah Waters: 1000 sanaa
“My minimum is 1,000 words a day… Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish- they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.”
W. Somerset Maugham: 1000 sanaa
W. Somerset Maugham kuului aikakautensa suosituimpiin kirjailijoihin ja oli tiettävästi 1930-luvun parhaiten palkattu kirjailija.
Silti hänen kuolemattomat lauseensa kuuluvat:
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
Sarah Waters: 1000 sanaa
“All I can do is write about whatever grabs me.”
J.G. Ballard: 1000 sanaa
“All through my career I’ve written 1,000 words a day – even if I’ve got a hangover. You’ve got to discipline yourself if you’re professional. There’s no other way.”
Sebastian Faulks: 1000 sanaa
“I never write less than a 1000 words a day. Writer’s Block is God’s way of telling you to shut up. More people should have it.”
P.G.Wodehouse: 1000 sanaa
“Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.”
Lisa See: 1000 sanaa
“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”
Margaret Meade: 1000 sanaa
“Wonder is very important, because if we never wondered, we would never get to the point of asking questions.”
Tracy Chevalier: 1000 sanaa
“Don’t write about what you know – write about what you’re interested in.”
Peter James: 1000 sanaa
“Keep writing and let the world roll on by. Take the madness of reality and shape it into something worth sharing.”
R. F. Delderfield: 1000 sanaa
“The best thing for the inside of a man, is the outside of a horse.”
Mark Twain: 1400–1800 sanaa
“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.”
Käytä aikaa oikeiden sanojen löytämiseen, sillä kuten Twain totesi, “melkein oikea” ei ole oikea. Se on ainoastaan melkein.
Susan Wittig Albert: 1500 sanaa
“The healing that can grow out of the simple act of telling our stories is often quite remarkable. Even more remarkably, this healing is not just our own healing: when it is shared, it is the healing of all women. That’s why, as we tell our stories to ourselves, it is also important to share them with others.”
Jack London: 1500 sanaa
“You can’t wait for inspiration.”
Lee Child: 1800 sanaa
“I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until about 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until the end.”
Stephen King: 2000 sanaa
Tai enemmänkin, hän kirjoitti The Running Manin vain yhdessä viikossa.
“…Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.”
King on avannut kirjoitusnopeuttaan ja käyttämiänsä metodeja teoksessaan On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Hänen mukaansa kolme kuukautta on enimmäisaika, jonka pitäisi kulua ensimmäisen luonnoksen valmistumiseen.
Nicholas Sparks: 2000 sanaa
“Writing is hard. Writing well is hard. Writing under deadline is just misery at its most horrible.”
Charles Dickens: 2000 sanaa
“I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.”
James Thurber: 2000 sanaa
“I admire the person who can write it right off. Mencken once said that a person who thinks clearly can write well. But I don’t think clearly–too many thoughts bump into one another.”
Alec Waugh: 2000 sanaa
“Nothing is more dead and dated than the book which once caused controversy.”
Patricia Highsmith: 2000 sanaa
“I can’t write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.”
Maya Angelou: 2500 sanaa
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Anne Rice: 3000 sanaa
“I plunge into the work and write an episode; I can’t just clock in at 3,000 words. I have to have time free to resolve things.”
Arthur Conan Doyle: 3000 sanaa
“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”
Anthony Trollope: 3000 sanaa
“Above all else, never think you’re not good enough. There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.”
Anthony Trollope kirjoitti päivittäin 3000 sanaa kello 5.30 ja 8.30 välisenä aikana ennen töihin lähtöä.
Iain Banks: 3000 sanaa
“Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don’t try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing.”
Norman Mailer: 3000 sanaa
“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.”
Frederick Forsyth: 3000 sanaa
“There are several ways of making quick money but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank.”
Charles Hamilton: 4000 sanaa
“I have been told – by men who do not write – that this is all fanciful. This only means that they don’t understand.”
Enid Blyton: 6000 sanaa
“You’re trying to escape from your difficulties, and there never is any escape from difficulties, never. They have to be faced and fought.”
John Creasey: 6000 sanaa
“How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one.”
Michael Crichton: 10 000 sanaa
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”
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