For the past several months (give or take), I have been considering the issue of prolific writers. It’s a bit like being on a teeter-totter. One day, I’m all “go prolificacy”, the next, I’m “just slow it down, will you?” Today is a slow it down day, in case you’re wondering.
So here’s my deal: I know that there are many writers who write fast. Fast with prodigious output. Amazing output. The sort of output that would drive lesser mortals to drink. If lesser mortals were interested in writing lots and lots of words rather than engaging in other activities.
On a good day, even I reach the levels of prodigious output. It is amazing how many words can pour from one little brain when the mood strikes. Because I am not a first-draft writer (heck, I’m not even a third-draft writer), I don’t worry too much about the quality of what I put down. 99.999% of it will be tossed aside.
What I’m seeing lately, though, isn’t my personal type of prolific authorship – it’s the too-many-books-being-published-in-a-year type. You know what I mean. Authors who seem to have a new release every other week, even though it’s more like every couple of months. I’m not particularly envious of these authors and their publishing success. Here’s why.
I don’t believe that anyone can write a good, solid, spotless first draft. I am of the opinion that great fiction is like a diamond – it must be shaped, honed, polished. It must have the right setting. It needs to be turned and examined to find just the right place to cut, to chisel. Brilliance must be enhanced, flaws turned to assets. This goes for big diamonds and small. Size does not matter – it’s all about quality.
Authors who do not spend their time on this process end up with shoddy work. Stories that have gaps and plot holes. Underdeveloped characters. Lack of world-building. Great ideas that suffer in the execution. Bad cuts and shoddy craftsmanship. These are the books that give romance a bad name.
I’m going to pick on erotica writers a little bit here, but this by no means should suggest that they are the only guilty party here. It’s just that erotica writers, specifically, started me on this train of thought. I started noticing, more through happenstance than anything, that a lot of authors I’d never heard of had a lot of books on the shelves (virtual and physical). I’d also started noticing that as a rule, most of the erotica I’d been reading was less-than-satisfactory.
I think these two things go hand-in-hand. There is great demand for erotica fiction these days. Amazingly, or perhaps not so, there are legions of authors who write erotica. The amount of erotica being published is stunning. I am simply going to presume that demand matches production. Which is great. I think it’s a healthy sign when people clamor for more, more, more when it comes to reading.
Except, well, this incredible output – on the part of authors and publishers – seems to be missing a quality control aspect. Where two years ago, I could find erotica that, while maybe not a forever keeper, was satisfying (pun not really intended but perhaps unavoidable). There was story, world, emotion, characterization, plot – the whole shebang. The sex was integral and interesting to the story. The whole package made sense.
Then came books where nothing made sense. Sadly, this wasn’t a one-off. It was more like a harbinger of future books. The more erotica published, the less satisfactory as a genre it is. Which is sad because it makes the entire industry developed around the current erotica craze like a house of cards. Readers are already grumbling about quality in these books. They’re desperately seeking the next big thing.
This perceived demand for more and more erotica leads to authors who churn out work without regard for what they’re doing. Let’s face facts, good editing is falling by the wayside across the industry. It’s not just a romance thing, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? Sloppy writing is just more ammunition for our genre’s critics.
I realize that writing is one of the world’s more poorly paid professions. This isn’t just true for romance authors, it’s a fact of life no matter what type of fiction you create. Authors who are proliferate have a greater chance of actually living off their work. But authors who disappoint readers with lousy books tend to fall by the wayside. Sure it’s a great ride now, but don’t you want to be in this business for the long haul?
No related posts.
Have you considered that sometimes, it’s because an author has more than one publisher and it just happens that half a dozen books with their name on the cover is being released within a few months?
Especially since a lot of erotica being published are anthologies, not entire novels, so an author can write, say 2 novellas and have her name on 2 covers, but has actually written less than 100k.
As I’m finishing the fourth complete version of my next erotic romance, I would just like to know where to sign up for the easy street version…I’m kidding. Maybe it’d be nice if it had just worked the first time, but bottom line, it’s my name on the cover and I’m the one who has to live with the final version forever.
I keep hearing about poor quality, too much quantity. What I know personally is that I bust my butt every time to write the best book I can, and then my editors do the same. I take pride in my work. So do they. The fellow erotic authors I know are right there with me, hammering out plot twists, layering emotion.
Are there authors doing poor work? Possibly. Does this get into the realm of subjective? Absolutely. People are still moaning about that lousy hack Dan Brown and how he can’t write.
And while it would be nice to imagine that if I only wrote one book a year it would be the Greatest Thing Ever, the truth is, when it’s done, it’s done and more time doesn’t improve matters. I can only write better because I’ve learned more and improved and developed more skill, more craft, more experience. Two years from now, maybe I can come back and do better on the book I just finished, but right now? It’s the best I can do.
*smiles* I’m of the opinion that Dan Brown is a better screenwriter than a novelist. Great ideas, wrong medium perhaps?
I read a lot. I find a favorite author, I’ll go through their entire oeuvre as quickly as I can. Prolific good authors are my friends
As a reader, I want my favorite authors to have new books being published every 6 months at the least. I read somewhere that publishing one book a year was considered prolific and I almost cried. (During a non-busy week I can put away five books, if it’s busy, just 2 books a week).
There are some prolific authors out there who churn out the same manuscript over and over with just the characters names changed (and not much else). Until I overdose on them, I’m happy to buy what they’re supplying. After a while, I’ll get sick of reading them and just ignore them in the bookstore and online.
I don’t see what’s so bad about being prolific if people are snapping up what you’re selling. Maybe being prolific gives an author the patina of a hack — hey that’s great
Tabloids make more money than certain newspapers. But people appreciate both and there’s more than enough room in the market for both.
Could it possibly be a bit sour grapes? Oh if Lady X writes 10 books next year, everyone will buy her stuff and not mine? I’m not sure that’s fair to us readers. Budgets tend to go out the window for hobbies/passions. Libraries go for diversity so rather than stock all of Lady X’s novels, they’ll go for a couple of hers and thus have room for other authors (least, that’s what I see as a reader).
Mei mei wrote: Until I overdose on them, I’m happy to buy what they’re supplying. After a while, I’ll get sick of reading them and just ignore them in the bookstore and online.
This is what worries me about trends that lead to gluts. There can be a boom-and-bust phenomenon that is very hard on authors, both personally and creatively.
Personally I cannot be prolific. My ideas take a certain number of drafts to gel and I’ve also got kids to raise, etc… I’m at peace with that. One good book a year or so is fine for me. I’ve noticed most of my favorite authors write about that many. Fortunately they have back lists I haven’t finished getting through.
Oops, that was me above. I should not try to post comments while getting kids off to the schoolbus!
Books happen differently, writers write differently with every book. Some people naturally will write faster, others slower, with no connection to quality. Quality can also be the result of bad editing, subjective reader expectations, etc — if an author’s work is so terrible, how did it reach the shelves anyway? And why does it sell enough to demand more if it’s really awful? Someone must like it.
I’m a slow writer by nature, 3-4 books a year (well, maybe that’s considered average in category land), but I’d like to do more, so I’m trying out a new drafting process that will produce new drafts faster and leave more time for editing on the other side. I expect it to speed up my process, which has become painfully slow to me. I don’t imagine writing faster will hurt the quality of my books, who knows, it could even open new creative avenues. Laboring over a word until you’re sick with it may doesn’t necessarily yield better writing. I’m actually learning this from people who do write faster, work on several books at a time, and you know, they also seem to be having a heck of a lot of fun in the process (and creating great books), so count me in.
Blaming authors who write quickly for bad books the iffy reputation of romance in the world seems misleading at best — most of the people who have misconceptions about romance probably haven’t even picked one up, let alone read many of the good or bad ones. Wonky perceptions of romance novels have been around since my mother hid them in her dresser drawer 40 years ago — they’ve always been kind of a guilty pleasure and right along with that have been the people who look down their noses at it, no matter how long a book took to write.
A writer’s process is their own — if that means they can write 15 books a year, go for it.
Sam
I never really thought about this before but looking at my auto-buy list, not one of those authors write more than 2 books a year. Most write only one. Interesting.
As a reader, waiting for a new book does drive me a bit crazy. I’m counting down the days til I hear Bayard’s story in Margaret Moore’s The Notorious Knight. But I do know that when I finally am able to read his romance, it’ll be worth the wait.
Isn’t that a big part of romance? Anticipation? Christmas wouldn’t be as exciting if it happened every day.
Blaming authors who write quickly for bad books the iffy reputation of romance in the world seems misleading at best
Besides, let’s be real, here. It doesn’t matter how many authors cry foul when this subject comes up, there are readers who don’t want layered emotion or plot twists or anything but the sex. The sex, the sex, the sex. Upside down and inside out and every which way. They gripe when it takes too long to get to. They gripe when there are too many non sex pages between sex scenes. Authors may deny this is why they’re being read, but it’s the truth in many situations, and is the reason there are authors putting out a dozen or so short stories a year with small publishers. I’ve downloaded and read dozens from Phaze and eXtasy and Liquid Silver and other sites. There may be a lot of authors who sweat the process, but there are just as many who are feeding the frenzy and nothing more.
I don’t think it automatically correlates if one author produces less than another author in a given time period that the lesser producing author is creating better product. Talent varies from individual to individual. There are some authors who are so disciplined, whose brains work so efficiently that they write very clean first drafts that don’t take months of editing. And the final product is wonderful. On the flip side, there are authors who can spend a year laboriously working on a manuscript and not even get past average.
IMO, there is no one path to a successful career and no one timetable to a wonderful book.
I agree, Sarah.:wink: There are also those of us who seem to put out fast, but who’ve actually been storing up those stories in our heads for years.
I think I agree with the original poster, to a degree. I recently checked out an excerpt of an ebook, and it had errors on the first page that made me decide not to pursue it further. An extra editing pass would have benefited that book tremendously. It seems like there’s a lot of pressure to hurry up and get books out there, but if too many sloppy efforts make it to the real/virtual bookshelves, it’s going to turn people off.
Of course, this problem is easily solvable at the author level, so it’s a total case-by-case basis. If you’re vigilant about the quality of your books, that’s fantastic — but it is okay to be concerned about those who aren’t.
I don’t think the problem is Prolificacy, I think it’s more that everyone has jumped on the erotica/paranormal/you name it bandwagon and the subsequent works are just not of great quailty.
The same thing happenend with Chick Lit, right:?:
As far as writers who are pumping them out one right after another and the work is not good, hopefully they will get a wake up call from their fans and go back to focusing more on putting out the best quality. I know I get a little antsy waiting for my favorite authors to put out their next work but as long as it’s still the good stuff that I’ve grown to love than its worth the wait, and in the meantime while I’m waiting it gives me a chance to discover new authors.
Demand drives the market. I hear over and over that to build one’s name and reader list, an author has to release at least two books a year. One reason given is that it’s the only way to keep your name, and your work, in the readers’ minds. It makes sense, given that there are a heck of a lot of different authors and books released each year.
I’m doomed to muddle around in the low mid-list, I’m afraid, because I’m a book a year producer. (And lagging behind that at the moment.) That works for authors who are already established names — like Susan Elizabeth Phillips, for example — but not for me with my two books out, and working on a third.
I agree that supercharged writing doesn’t necessarily mean the quality lessens, only that it does in some cases. I have friends for whom producing 40 quality pages a day is almost a breeze. Wish I was one of them! LOL
I come at this from a different perspective. It seems most of the other commentors are authors. I’m a reader with absolutely no aspirations toward being an author, and no real concept as to what is involved with actually writing a book.
Annony said:
Apparently I visit the wrong reader and review blogs because I don’t see any of this going on–LOL. But it may explain why I’m feeling rather clueless when it comes to Erotic Romance.
I give Kassia credit for bringing up a subject that seems like an 800 lb. gorilla sitting right smack in the middle of our virtual romance room. The quality of erotic romance. I can’t speak as an authority on Erotic Romance, as I don’t read more than a 2 or 3 a month. But I can speak as an authority on those 2 or 3 and ultimately I’m disappointed in what I’m reading. Maybe I’m reading the wrong books or maybe the quality on a whole isn’t there. I’m leaning toward reading the wrong books–LOL.
But I do think there is a supply and demand problem. Demand is very high, maybe even for the types of ER that Anonny is talking about, but eventually the average romance reader will take there dollars elsewhere looking for quality over quantity and then perhaps things will improve.
I hope no one took my earlier comment to imply the time it takes to write a book *always* correlates with quality. It certainly can, though; I’ve heard authors say they wish they’d had more time with a story. I came close to the edge with one manuscript; I was glad I had time to fix it during revisions.
Another factor which is very individual is the possibility of author burnout. Of course there are authors who are prolific over long periods. But some burn out under industry pressure and readers wonder what became of them. When I look at my keeper shelf many of the authors have been writing just 1-2 really good books a year but they’ve kept that up for decades. IMHO it’s important (though not easy, given industry pressures) for every author to find that correct pace that allows her to keep things fresh and life in some sort of balance.
Each author is different so I think it’s hard to say that time spent writing = quality. Some writers have a harddrive full of books that they hadn’t yet sold. So many times that first sale opens them up to other sales that happen very quickly. Other authors just have brains that work differently and need a year or more to complete a book. And others can just get it done so quickly my head spins.
As for me, I’m not a first draft writer. I call myself a rewriter because all the work happens during the revision/rewriting stage. But sometimes you can polish the diamond forever, but it’s still just not a very good book. Other times with a deadline looming overhead, the magic is just there and you can get a book done with a few less drafts and it’s a good book.
As a reasonably prolific author, I found this post pretty interesting! But while I don’t agree that prolificacy = poor quality, nor do I believe that the author who takes three years to write a book will turn in the perfect manuscript. Case in point: HANNIBAL, by Thomas Harris. Took him ten years to crank it out, and I hated it. Just my opinion, and of course millions of readers disagreed with me, but I couldn’t help wonder what he had DONE those ten years.
I’ve been disappointed recently with auto-buys who take 18 months to write a book that I buy in hardcover and…they’re just not that great. How does that fit in?
I know it’s anathema to mention her, but Laurell K. Hamilton’s books are hideously edited and she’s got all the money in the world and huge publishing houses behind her.
Let’s mention the other 800lb gorilla in the room if you’re going to talk about writing books quickly: Nora Roberts anyone? I used to think she couldn’t be any good, but that’s before I read her Chesapeake Bay series. Or her Born In…series. Or most of her single titles. I certainly appreciate her hard work and ability to publish quickly.
What about J.R. Ward? She puts out one of those BDB monsters every six months, with some other books thrown in to make it exciting. While many of us have problems with her books, none of the problems have anything to do with editing or quality of the writing pushed by a tight schedule. And many of us are rabid fangrrrls anyway.
As for erotica. The most prolific author I know is also one of the best I’ve ever read. He produces about 9K words a week for his subscription series, and waiting for the next installment on Fridays is sometimes all that gets me through the week. Matthew Haldeman-Time makes a fangrrl out of me, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Along with those 9K words, he’s writing short stories and at least two novels and I don’t think the quality will be at all affected, because it certainly hasn’t been yet. And he doesn’t even have a publisher (yet).
As for published erotica authors, I have auto-buys there too, and thank heavens they produce more than one or two novels a year. In fact, I probably have more erotica auto-buys than mainstream. Joey Hill is a slow writer, but Jules Jones, Stephanie Vaughan, Chris Owen, and Laura Baumbach aren’t.
Part of the issue is access, I think. It’s much easier to get immediate satisfaction (or lack thereof) from erotica, because you see it, order it, download it, and read it, all in five minutes. Even if you see a book you love on Amazon, you’ve still got to wait a couple of days at least before you get it. So you choose more carefully, maybe, for “real” books than for erotica.
And I know I buy more erotica than I would otherwise because I don’t get to flip through the book. When I can flip through beginning, middle, and end, a book I would have picked up from one excerpt becomes one I put back on the shelf. I don’t have that option with erotica at e-houses, so I take more chances and meet more duds.
And let us not forget, You can’t polish a turd. Just because it takes author X two years per book and author Y only four months, in no way ensures that author X’s book will be superior to that of author Y.
I should have pointed out that I’m not so sure how prolific an author is has to do with the quality what eventually gets published. Ultimately if there is a problem with what’s been written isn’t it the editor/publisher’s responsibilty to kick it back for corrections/rewrites? If books are being released…
The author’s name might be on the cover but any publisher that releases sub-par work is just as to blame.
PS…For me Nora Roberts is consistantly good and yet she’s probably in a class by herself when it comes to prolificacy.
///Stories that have gaps and plot holes. Underdeveloped characters. Lack of world-building. Great ideas that suffer in the execution. Bad cuts and shoddy craftsmanship. These are the books that give romance a bad name.///
I really don’t think romance has a bad name — does it? Am I living in happy land again?
Just to put yet another spin on it, when I read this quote in the previous post, for some reason it made me think of all the television shows I love that have many of these problems, LOL (Buffy, as much as I am a dedicated fan, has a lot of them over the course of the seasons, and The Pretender, another favorite, was just terribly done at times, and Smallville …don’t get me started…). But they are all wildly successful shows.
It doesn’t stop people from loving them, and maybe it’s the same with books. We’re writers, and inside our own world we love to obsess about craft, and while many discerning readers (or readers who are aspiring writers, who I think comprise an entirely different category of reader), may notice these things, but in general, the world at large just wants a good story, characters they can care about, and to forget about life for a while. Probably a lot of them are lousy spellers and don’t even notice a typo.
(I’m being somewhat tongue in cheek here, but I also think it’s probably true…). And ideally, they want it relatively quickly, I suppose, which is why category romance can put out as many books as it does every month.
As a reader/viewer, I am very forgiving of craft issues if someone entertains me and gets me involved — the most carefully written book may lose me if it doesn’t make me care — so perhaps in what people are buying, whether we agree if it’s “quality fiction” or not, there’s something that speaks to a reader, entertains them and makes them care, even if it’s not perfectly crafted.
Sam
PS: Annony, I think you’re right that it’s not all about craft, but I also don’t think it’s all about sex — 90% of people who write me about my books mention loving characters or plot elements, and almost none mention sex, or maybe that’s about 10% of the convo.
To me it seems as if many of the commenters are missing the point of the post. At no point in the article did I see any implication that prolificacy = turd, centuries = masterpiece.
“What I’m seeing lately, though, isn’t my personal type of prolific authorship – it’s the too-many-books-being-published-in-a-year type. You know what I mean. Authors who seem to have a new release every other week, even though it’s more like every couple of months.”
(And I’m not even sure where it was being used as the major reason for romance publishing’s bad rep?)
I agree with Krozser but that may be because I’m one of those readers who care about ‘craft’–which, to me, equals a good plot, with plausible characters and an emotionally powerful story–and not just ’sex sex sex’. (I can only speak to erotic romance because that genre holds most of my favourite authors right now.)
I used to enjoy the work of an author of an e-pub but I noticed the same problem–a decrease in quality even though she was putting out a novel or a short story in an anthology every few months. Now I don’t know for sure why this happened, but I don’t think it’s improbable that her prodigious output had something to do with it. I’ve had so many similar experiences that I just gave up on e-books (temporarily, I hope).
I find it curious that whenever this issue comes up people fall all over themselves to show just how improbable speed could affect the quality of writing. Is this really such a non-issue? For about every other kind of job such criticisms would be considered sensible or at least fair, yet for writing (at least in the romance genre) everyone seems to back away, hands raised in the air with invocations of Nora Roberts. I too am very forgiving of a work’s form if I find it engrossing but the ideas of ‘craft’ and ‘entertainment’ are to a large extent inextricable, at least for me.
~Is this really such a non-issue?~
Largely yes, imo.
The amount of time it takes to write a book doesn’t matter–as long as the book is the best that particular writer can craft at that particular time.
Pace, process, schedule, discipline, focus, desire, creative juices, skill all come into play here. Individually.
I’m not a first draft writer either. My process generally requires three drafts. And my process–and discipline–normally put me at the keyboard six to eight hours a day, five to six days a week.
All these factors will vary for the individual writer. Will some push the work out too quickly when a little more (or a lot more) time may have improved the finished product? Sure. Or, regardless of time spent, or not, the finished product may be the best that particular writer can produce.
Time is only one element among many.
It’s odd commenting on this subject, for me. I wasn’t going to–but I’m weak.
I don’t think speed of writing has anything to do with quality. I guess I say that, because I’m pretty much a first draft writer. I edit, but never in my life have I ever written more than one draft of a book. But it also takes me awhile to write a book because of that, I agonize over every word I put down. Sometimes it will take me an hour to write one page…LOL
I wish I could write faster. I’d love to have 4-5 books out in one year for different publishers. That’s a dream come true. And if an author can do it, why should they be punished for it?
It all sounds a bit like sour grapes to me. Like someone saying, “I write better than her! Why is she published and I’m not?”
I know several very prolific authors in the erotica genre. One in particular that has had eight seperate publications over the last nine months. Prolific? Yes. Poor author? I don’t think so. Not with all of her four and five star review ratings.
A poor author and poor editing is part subjective and part whether the writer actually wants to be the best she can be. Sometimes, no matter how long an author labors on a piece, the story is just not good.
Sandee
I see writer output and editing being conflated here. No matter how long I took to write the book if it is edited 3 days before release it won’t be perfect.
It does make me wonder about putting some of my output under a pseudonym though. Even a perception of a problem by consumers *is* a problem.
I wish I could have connected today — lots interesting comments (which, not surprisingly, was my goal!). First, let me state for the record: no sour grapes, unless you count the ones in my wineglass
. Or, hmm, the ones that naturally arise when I’ve bought a book that makes me want to scream. I buy 90% of the books I read (publishers send me the others, for which I am eternally grateful).
A few points, in no particular order. One, I believe that short fiction (including novellas) requires more attention to storytelling and craft than long fiction. Those who dismiss category romance really have no idea how hard it is to do well. Compressing so much into a limited number of words requires tight writing and incredible skill. So I don’t buy into the smaller word count argument. Good short fiction — whether it be something by Raymond Carver (a master) or a erotica author — is a sheer delight for me, both because I like short fiction and because well-executed short fiction is a breathtaking delight. Of course, I can’t say “no” in under a dozen words.
I do find it interesting that many authors defend the prolificacy problem (as I’m calling it). I find it interesting because out there in readerland there are rumblings of discontent. Right now, it’s at the low grumble level, but it’s been building in volume for a little over a year now. I know there are a lot of really good writers out there, but I also know that poorly written product can kill a trend. Someone pointed to chicklit, and I have to agree. Too much, too fast, and lots of rushing to the stores. It’s amazing that the genre survived. I’m glad it did.
I purposely avoided two topics: Nora Roberts and the editing process. I avoided Nora (sorry Nora, it wasn’t personal!) because while not every book of hers is a keeper for me, she really does know how to write great romance. She’s also not as prolific as legend would have it, but that’s another issue. Bottom line — and she put it better than I can — is that she’s worked hard on her craft and process. She’s a naturally fast writer, sure, but I think there’s a lot more hard effort going on behind the scenes than we realize.
I avoided the topic of editing because the Internets are only so big (and RTB does try to limit us on word count, though I’d say without 100% success). Editing across fiction, particularly genre fiction, is a big issue with me. While there are many great, dedicated editors out there, I’m not convinced that they’re given the resources needed to do their jobs. Ditto for copy editors. I think this is endemic to the industry.
I also think that there are a lot of small publishers jumping on the erotica bandwagon with questionable editing capabilities. I know this isn’t a popular thing to say, but it does bear noting. I am of the opinion that a good editor is a writer’s best friend. I read my own, uh, words of wisdom long after the fact and wonder why, oh, why I don’t have an editor. If only to save me from my own bad ideas. Or bad analogies. Someone to save me from myself would be a lovely thing. Alas, mine is only a mildly profitable blog.
So editing is another post for another day. And I would still caution writers who write fast to think of the bigger picture. Those who argue that these works wouldn’t be published if they were bad are missing so many points — and while there seems to be an insatiable appetite for this type of fiction right now, I know there’s always a next big thing around the corner. It’s what makes the world go around.
I used to think of myself as fairly prolific, but I’ve been put to shame by a lot of my peers.Sometimes this makes me feel bad about myself and my output. “Oh, if only I wrote faster…”
Then I remember that I like do other things, like play the Sims, watch Supernatural, sleep…
I am the fastest writer *I* can be. I am also the best writer *I* can be. What I write quickly is sometimes better than the work that takes more time. Other times the stuff that takes forever to reach the page requires much less editing to make it the best I can.
NO writer’s words are perfect the first time, without any need for editing.
I’m not sure how I feel about a glut of a certain author or genre, though. I guess if someone’s buying it, good for the author and publisher! But how many times does a reader have to get burned by poor quality work before they stop buying it?
Personally, I don’t want to find out, which is why I don’t submit anything that hasn’t been polished the best I can polish it. (Not to say that everything I publish will hit everyone’s buttons. It won’t. But I’ve done my best to make sure it is my best. And I’m not sure I can imagine any writer not doing the same…don’t we all want to put out our very best work?) Of course…best work is a subjective thing…:)