Joss Whedon on being prolific

It's Friday, Friday...!

From Joss Whedon, some great nitty-gritty advice (sprinkled with characteristic Whedon wit) about being prolific, or trying to, or... er... bribing oneself to:

REWARD YOURSELF EARLY AND OFTEN

Whedon has acknowledged the ironic fact that he hasn’t finished Getting Things Done. And he has mentioned eating dessert first. So I must ask, “Is dessert a metaphor?”

“No,” he replies. “No, I’m saying give me cake. Why didn’t you bring cake? Didn’t they explain how these things work?” And then he gets serious, more or less. “I have a reward system. I am the monkey with the pellet and it’s so bad that I write almost everything in restaurants or cafes [so] that when I have an idea, I go and get chocolate." He doesn’t wait to flesh out the idea and then reward himself, he rewards himself simply for having the idea. "I’ll write it down and then get some chocolate. I have the idea, I get my pellet . . . I mean I’m terrible. I don’t put that on the list because that’s not advice. That’s something I’m seeking help for. It’s a vice and it’s different than advice."

Oh, come on, you’re obviously making it work.

“But I could be better. I can make it work better and I’m trying to teach myself more discipline because when you have children and you are an artist, you already have more than fills a day. I would also like to have friends, hobbies, maybe read a book sometime.”

Read the whole article here! It's a good'un.

The man has no shortage of ideas, so my takeaway is that he must have the metabolism of a hummingbird. Or he's exagerating. But probably the former.

See you Sunday! With your stories! About fifth floors, or lack thereof!

Define "prolific"

From The Wall Street Journal:

Romance writer Nora Roberts didn't bother to celebrate when she finished her 200th book, "The Witness."

"I don't really count," says Ms. Roberts, a 61-year-old grandmother with red hair and a gravelly smoker's voice.

She took a couple of days off to catch up on chores and gardening. Then she launched into her 201st, "Celebrity in Death," the next installment of a futuristic romantic suspense series that she writes under the pen name J.D. Robb. She's since finished her 202nd, a romance novel set near her home in Maryland, and her 203rd, "Delusion in Death," another J.D. Robb book. She's now writing her 204th, "Whiskey Beach," a romantic suspense novel set in coastal Massachusetts.

And what is her secret? Well...

Ms. Roberts writes for six to eight hours every day, fueled by Diet Pepsi and Winston Filter 100s cigarettes. She doesn't use ghost writers, co-writers or a research assistant. "Then I'd have to talk to somebody, and I'd rather not," she says.

Read the rest here.

Some of us are just constitutionally suited for this line of work. Me, I do enjoy talking to people, hate diet soda, and don't smoke, so it was always going to be an uphill battle.