This is another one of those things that, if you hang around on Reddit or amateur writer forums, you will run into near constantly. The second they get the feeling that someone is better than they are, they will demand that it can’t be so because… fee-fees!

And that’s just dumb.

This came up recently, as it usually does, quite innocently. Someone asked how fast people wrote and lots of people came back with lots of different answers. Some people were fast and some people were slow and lots were everywhere in between.

Yet the moment people started posting some faster scores, there was a lot of grumbling. “Nobody writes that fast!” Well, obviously that’s untrue because lots of people demonstrably do. There are some of them right here. Of course, they don’t like that and because they don’t like it, there are almost always one of two responses. Either “you’re lying!”, the author is making claims that are simply untrue, or, “you must only write crap!” as though no one with that kind of output  can ever make anything worthwhile.

Both are absurdly insulting to the individual. Just because you can’t manage to hit those speeds or produce that volume of work, that doesn’t mean anyone else can’t. A lot of people are much farther down the writing road than you are. It’s time to deal with the reality.

It’s just that these people don’t want to. That began a hot discussion of real life authors who publish a lot of thick books every year, people who directly document their word counts and get more than a million words a year out there. You’d think that people would just give up when faced with the demonstrable fact that they’re wrong but oh no. That simply never happens.

One person, when I pointed out that a lot of authors write more than a million words a year, protested, saying “you’d have to write 4000 words a day, 5 days a week!” Yup. I write a minimum of 5k a day, 5 days a week. Welcome to being wrong. In fact, the day that this was happening, I’d written 6500 words in about 3.5 hours.

That made this person shit his proverbial shorts. Obviously, if he’s not capable, it can’t be done. So I pointed out a number of well-known, very prolific authors who demonstrably write more than a million words a year. In fact, they’ve done it year-over-year for several in a row. The proof is in their output. All you have to do is count the pages of their published works and do a little simple math. That ought to end the debate. In fact, at my current output, if I don’t lose focus, I’ll get over a million words this year too. I’m usually pretty close. Right this second, I’m sitting at 648,816 with 2 weeks remaining on my current book (and another 60k estimated on the way) and 3 more books planned. If I get those 8 books under my belt, averaging 125,000 each, I hit my million. I just added up the words in the first 4 books of the year and I’m averaging 124,953 right now. That’ll be a nice milestone.

Yet these people cannot comprehend that it can ever be done, by anyone, evidence be damned. They get really upset that they are not somehow the gold standard by which everyone else must be judged. Also, most of these people have never published a book, most have never even finished a book in their lives. They’re hardly the ones to be demanding to be listened to.

It’s an endless display of childish jealousy and that’s really what keeps most published authors away from the amateur meetups. We’re out there and we usually talk behind the scenes. I know why most of them never open their mouths because the second they do, they get attacked. I’m just a glutton for punishment, I guess so I keep trying, but it’s getting really discouraging.

We’re not out there trying to show off. We’re not trying to shame anyone. We’re showing you that it can be done if only you’re willing to put in the time and effort to reach that level. It  can be done and we’re happy to explain how to get there, but most of these amateurs, they just don’t care. They are the ones who want to have written, who want to have already done the hard work and can embrace the rewards. Unfortunately, that’s just not how reality works. If you want it, you have to make it happen.

I just had a discussion with someone who was wondering how they can write while also having a full time job. I told him that I woke up early, foregoing sleep in order to have time. If you want it enough,  you’ll do what is necessary. He said he can’t do that and went on to look for another solution that required no sacrifice or effort from him. That guy is never going to get anywhere. These are the kinds of people that fail but they also dominate all of these chat spaces because they can’t get it through their heads that they ought to be better.

Because they’re just immature children in the end, children with a terrible work ethic who will never get anywhere in life. They’re mad about it. They think anyone who does better than they do, they should get upset with instead of trying to emulate them.

Because this whole thing is just pathetic.