We Are ALL Pikers

[Wifetheif]

I just finished "Remember, Remember" by Charles Beaumont published in 1963 by MacMillan in the chapter "The Bloody Pulps" Here is a daunting fact that proves not even the most prolific of us or the one among us who composes the longest most expansive universes is fit to even touch the garments of the old-timers working for a penny a word in the pulps. The greatest pulp writer may very well have been Walter B. Gibson who wrote TWO complete Shadow novels EVERY MONTH for close to two decades! He typed so hard and so furiously on his manual typewriter, that when he finished a novel every one of his fingers was blistered. A fortnight of healing and he did it all over again. Year in year out. Here is the money quote from Beaumont's book," ...but each of the 178 book length-ers 7,500,000 words of print were turned out by Maxwell Grant." (Gibson's pen name)
I know the great Depression was a teriffic motivator to find work and keep it once you found it but MY GOD! Gibson was turning out so much material that they began hiring other writers behind his back lest he step in front of a bus or something.

Whats the biggest work in terms of word length you have turned out?
Who is our most prolific author?
Haw many Lit.com writers have cracked the million word barrier if any?
It there a pulp writer whose works inspired your own career?
This should be a fun discussion

 

[MelissaBaby]

Haw many Lit.com writers have cracked the million word barrier if any?

I don’t have an exact count, but I am somewhere around 850,000 words published and I am far from the most prolific author here, so I’d guess that quite a few have topped a million.

 

[RejectReality]

450k words - Danica. Though it's book 1 of 3 and really almost everything in that pen name is all part of one larger story.
SamuelX unless someone knows of someone who's surpassed him.
Last check I was at 2.3 million words in 2019 across all three pen names. ( On Lit. Some stuff is only in other places )
Career? LOL Would have been Weis & Hickman, David Eddings, and Raymond E. Feist for getting serious about writing beyond D&D backstories and really bad porn.

And "Pikers" means something completely different to me. It was a slur for people from the county where I lived ( Pike ) used by the stuck-up, rich krauts in the next county. LOL

 

[ElectricBlue]

Whats the biggest work in terms of word length you have turned out?

104,000 words, my take on the Arthurian legend.

Who is our most prolific author?

Don't know, don't care. Not me, that's for sure.

How many Lit.com writers have cracked the million word barrier if any?

Last time I counted my published words up, I reckon I'm up around 1.5 million words over eleven years. That's a steady output of just over 10k a month, which sounds about right. Plus another several hundred thousand words that don't see the light of day.

It there a pulp writer whose works inspired your own career?

No. It's not a career, more a self indulgence.

 

[SimonDoom]

The most prolific author at Literotica in terms of number of story submissions is SamuelX, with 4150 stories submitted. I don't know, however, if he is the most prolific in terms of words generated.

The list of most prolific authors is here: https://www.literotica.com/a/.

I haven't done a careful count but I estimate my word total, with 66 stories published (7 of which are just 750-word stories), is around 600,000. My longest, if counted as a single story, was my 8-chapter incest story, which must be somewhere around 100,000+ words.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Of course those guys were getting paid like a penny a word and trying not to starve.
That's a pretty powerful motivator
Most of us are trying to squeeze writing in around a job and everything else.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I'm at about 560,000 words published and my longest is 40,000, my Aunt Tina series.

As for pulp writers, I grew up on Edgar Rice Burroughs.

 

[Erozetta]

Whats the biggest work in terms of word length you have turned out?

As far as a single work - 395k words over 4 novels in a series.

Who is our most prolific author?

No idea.

Haw many Lit.com writers have cracked the million word barrier if any?

Quite a few that I'm aware of. But published or written can make a difference in this.

I've written well over 2.2 million words. Published about 400k words (including under my real name and not just on Lit).

It there a pulp writer whose works inspired your own career?

Not a specific one, but Lovecraft ranks pretty high as far as pulp writing inspiration.

 

[XerXesXu]

927,000 published. When I publish my WIP I'll top one million.
I don't do pulp.

 

[MrPixel]

<curmudgeon>

For myself, and I suspect for 99.99% of us on AH, writing is a pleasant pastime, a hobby. I don't see the point where quantity is a metric of anything useful, especially when quality is a bar challenging many on LitE.

</curmudgeon>

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

<curmudgeon>

For myself, and I suspect for 99.99% of us on AH, writing is a pleasant pastime, a hobby. I don't see the point where quantity is a metric of anything useful, especially when quality is a bar challenging many on LitE.

</curmudgeon>

But there are those who insist numbers and stats are important and gloat over them almost daily.

You know what number I want to know? How many spots on the pup?

 

[Actingup]

None of my productivity stats are of note, but I do admire Anthony Trollope's output as an author in the 1800s. He wrote every day from 5:30 am to 8:30 am, requiring of himself 250 words every 15 minutes and thereby forcing himself to be completely focused. He then went off to work at the post office. He earned enough doing this that he was eventually able to resign his post-office job, forgoing his pension, and go full time as a writer.

 

[UncleJunior]

Whats the biggest work in terms of word length you have turned out?
278,000 words
It there a pulp writer whose works inspired your own career?
Robert E. Howard

I don't know the site stats and couldn't answer the others.

 

[RejectReality]

Got curious, so I looked it up and I've published a mere 240k words here since mid Dec. 2019. LOL Hmm... added up all the short stuff I've posted elsewhere, and there's damn near an additional 100k words worth in the same period of time. Some of that is Lit content compatible, if not exactly a length that does well here. May have to package up a few of those and bring them over. 20-30k of it is just because I haven't written the ending part of a couple of stories. They're written as a series of vignettes over there, because those do fine, but here they need the ending I haven't gotten to.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Two novels per month for 20 years? I'm thinking that there were other ghosts writing under that pen name, which is actually quite common for pulp franchises.

 

[MrPixel]

You know what number I want to know? How many spots on the pup?

1...2...3...4...5...6... oh fuck. He just licked my nose. Bleah! 1...2...3...4...5...6...

 

[StillStunned]

I wrote this post earlier this year: The first two million words.

 

[iwatchus]

I am pretty obsessive about what ever I do (including arguing on here at times)

I think I am around 630K words total (counting the work still in moderation) in the almost 6 months I have been writing. I made a post in the milestone thread on my 100th day, when I was almost 400K, so I have slowed down some in the last few months, but I think the quality is slowly improving.

My single longest piece is my 120K novel, which published two weeks in 6 pieces, although I wrote it as a single large document.

My original series is about 315K, but that really is a series of somewhat independent stories that combine in a larger story arc.

For influences, I have read relatively little fiction in the last 40 years -- careers suck in some ways, especially when you are obsessive about what you do == so I would have to go back to classic SciFi and Fantasy from my younger days, I guess Heinlein, Sturgeon and Tolkien come to mind.

My current influences are mostly local. I would like to be able to write consistently exceptional stories with depth, so @MelissaBaby is as much of an influence on me as anyone. I could imagine writing stories stylistically like hers, although she is a better story teller and a much better writer than I am or probably ever will be. There are many writers here who can make their words dance that I would love to be able to do, but I think that is beyond my reach. Seeing that silly avatar just above me, @StillStunned is definitely near the head of that class, but there are others up there with him. I also wish I could lighten up, write with the whimsical creativity of someone like @PennyThompson. There are others who excel at that as well.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Whats the biggest work in terms of word length you have turned out?

Here, it would be "Heavy Traffic" at 177,947 words

It is among the 29 stories that I have published here in the last eleven years. At this time, those all add up to 1,321,158 words.

But who's counting.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Only 803K words. Longest story is 107.4K in five parts. Second longest is 101.7K in four parts. Shortest story is 2.1K. Hardly prolific ...

 

[KittyOfSteele]

That's what pressure feels like. The secret of pulp writers is pretty much writing like there's a gun right behind their necks and it will detonate as soon as they stop typing.

Whats the biggest work in terms of word length you have turned out?

85K. Finished it last Saturday. An anthological novel about a pizza delivery girl. I did my work on logging everything about it with detail, and it took me a total of 1 day, 23 hours, and 33 minutes to write. Then again, I spread those hours accross 118 days, so...

I'm more into writing short stuff, but I wouldn't mind taking on something like the original draft of Forever Amber, which was two and a half million words. I don't know how I'd do it, but it's a challenge.

Haw many Lit.com writers have cracked the million word barrier if any?

I believe that I have since I have more than a decade writing. However, just recently it occured to me to log my words. Last year I managed to write 245K, and this year it's already going to 283K up to last week.

It there a pulp writer whose works inspired your own career?

Several. Direct influence would be Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, Frank Gruber, Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, Erle Stanley Gardner, Philip K. Dick, and Arthur C. Clarke. Now, authors who have been influences by the pulps themselves that have inspired me would be Ed Greenwood (The Forgotten Realms setting from D&D), William Gibson (Johnny Mnemonic and the whole Sprawl novels), Lee Child (Jack Reacher series), Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum series), and Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch series).