How does she do it, and why would she want to?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Danielle Steel has written 185 books and she's a year old than me. Which is a rate of about three a year, most of them best sellers. Besides making me wonder what the heck I've done with my life, I guess my question is... why? She has wealth beyond anyone's dreams of avarice, and — I may be doing her a disservice — but I can't imagine her stories vary much beyond the characters names and locations. How much money does one person need? Doesn't it get boring after a while? Is there no yearning to write the great American novel, or something...?

[ursus arctos]

The primary skill of such authors is to be able to churn out what their punters want with the regularity and consistency of McDonald's

I have long been of the opinion that such people are just wired differently than most

[Amor de Cosmos]

I might be doing her a disservice. There is, apparently, a detectable evolution in how she treats her material. She works on five books at once apparently. She's also had nine children. Mind boggling.

[Sits]

It’s not quite Barbara Cartland territory, although I’m not aware there was much evolution in her work.

[Sam]

I don't know about Danielle Steel in particular, but normally when writers are turning out that sort of output teams of ghostwriters are involved.

[Sporting]

I can address some of these questions from direct personal experience.

First, though, a more general observation. Why does Messi continue playing football? Or any rich person continue in their particular business? It's a bug, they enjoy it for what it is, many reasons.

Now to the particular. Imagine that round about 1965 you're a woman who finds herself at home with money for food etc coming in from a husband whose job takes him away a lot and though the money is enough you feel bored. So you sit down and in longhand write a historical novel and send the manuscript off more in hope than expectation to a publisher in London who agrees to publish it.

The book sells reasonably enough but as the many writers on this board know, this isn't enough to pay the bills. Happy thing here is, though, there's no immediate financial squeeze because although the marriage is ever so slowly breaking down, he does provide for his family. But the woman has enjoyed writing her first novel and feels inspired and emboldened, so she writes more, practically all of which are accepted. None are best sellers, though they do get picked up by US publishing companies such as St Martin's Press and are also translated into other European languages, By the time she dies she's published over 150 books. None are lauded for stylistic reasons but many are perfectly readable, bring pleasure to more than a few people, and at the same time pay the bills, and allow for nice holidays.

She writes for other publishers too, among them Mills and Boon, under different names. Solid sellers most of them (genres include historical novels, romances, detective stories involving nuns, a couple of children's books, a few biographies etc.) but she's a solid spender so has to continue, though at the same time she enjoys it, and when in 1971 she finally leaves her husband she is financially independent.

She also earns very nice payments from writing short stories for Woman, Women's Own, Bella and more. There are dozens of such stories. She's very generous with the money she earns.

How many hours a day spent writing? I would calculate around 6 or 7, with the rest of the time spent doing routine stuff, knitting, reading, amateur dramatics in her younger years, smoking furiously, drinking endless cups of coffee. Often she writes while the TV or radio is on. It's never a chore. When she's not writing she misses it.

I've been writing about my mother.

[Sits]

That’s a nice story Sporting.

[Jah Womble]

The primary skill of such authors is to be able to churn out what their punters want with the regularity and consistency of McDonald's

I have long been of the opinion that such people are just wired differently than most

Given the sheer numbers in which her work sells, I’d venture that those people represent the ‘majority’ here.

[Janik]

I think ursus was talking about the authors being wired differently rather than the readership.

[Various Artist]

That's a terrific tale Sporting. Have you read many of her works yourself, may I ask out of curiosity?

[Jah Womble]

I think ursus was talking about the authors being wired differently rather than the readership.

Ah, that would make more sense.

[Sporting]

That's a terrific tale Sporting. Have you read many of her works yourself, may I ask out of curiosity?

A fair few, yes. I have many signed copies. They make me sad and happy at the same time.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I'm glad I started this thread just to hear Sporting's story.

[tee rex]

Yes, terrific story. Thanks for sharing.

I've always been intrigued by the writing "bug", especially once I realized I didn't have it. I think it was crystalised in a magazine interview many years ago with an author (it might have been Iain Banks but can't swear to it) when he was asked what advice he gave to aspiring writers. His answer was simply "Don't". His rationale was: people who are driven to write are going to do it anyway, and bugger the advice. So, not me.

As for Danielle Steel, in the pre-internet days for me backpacking meant book swapping: you didn't want to be stuck on a Chinese train for 72 hours with nothing but a dog-eared Lonely Planet. So Sandy Gall's autobiography turned into Little Dorrit which turned into a Danielle Steel (Full Circle, about which I remember nothing whatsoever, unlike Sandy's tales of ITN fun). Which means I've finished more Steel than James Joyce, I suppose.

[imp]

I'm also curious if Sporting has read (m)any of his mum's books. I ask because my kids have never gone anywhere near any of mine.

I write because I can't do anything else (except edit). I wouldn't say that I especially enjoy it, or that I'd offer advice any different to Iain Banks, but I can't imagine stopping. A couple of days ago, though, I was so immersed in a very vaguely autobiographical short story that it was almost like snapping out of a vivid dream when I stopped after a few hours. That's probably the closest I come to pleasure.

[Sporting]

I'm also curious if Sporting has read (m)any of his mum's book

Answered a few posts upthread.

[Sporting]

I write because I can't do anything else (except edit)

...and referee?

[imp]

Answered a few posts upthread.

Ah, sorry - I missed that response. Would of course be interested to know under what name(s) she wrote, but also understand if you'd rather not say. My youngest daughter claims she hasn't read anything by me because "when you're dead I'll read them so that it'll feel like I'm still hearing your voice". Which is either a sneaky excuse for avoiding my books, or one of the most touching things anyone's ever said to me. In my increasingly sentimental dotage, I'll opt for the latter.

[imp]

...and referee?

Ask around the amateur football fields of Frankfurt and I'll think you'll find a wide body of opinion on this question.

[Sporting]

Would of course be interested to know under what name(s) she wrote, but also understand if you'd rather not say

I don't mind at all. Easier if I link to a wiki page (wsomeone set up for her; our family don't know who, but we suspect a US publisher or agent given that the (incomplete) bibliogaphy has the American publication dates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Peters_(novelist)...link is somewhat wonky.

[willie1foot]

I don't mind at all. Easier if I link to a wiki page (wsomeone set up for her; our family don't know who, but we suspect a US publisher or agent given that the (incomplete) bibliogaphy has the American publication dates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Peters_(novelist)...link is somewhat wonky.

Wow... that (incomplete) bibliography is impressive.

[WOM]

That was exhausting just scrolling down and reading all the titles. It's incomprehensible to me that a whole book was written behind each one. Good lord...the work.

[Various Artist]

Heavens, yes. Thanks for sharing, Sporting; I didn't ask her name(s) before as you hadn't volunteered the information initially so I didn't like to pry, but it's great to see all that and mildly boggling to realise that it doesn't even show her full output. Good to know the apparent publication schedules are presumably(?) telescoped somewhat due to only representing the US dates – does that mean she didn't actually produce 28 books in the 1975-8 window alone...??

I'm slightly intrigued as to which of her vast oeuvre you have decided to dip your toes into, not least because I suspect the proportion of men who make up the readership for any of them is pretty tiny. I might have to ask my mum if she's come across any of them though as she's long been into hoovering up historical fiction of the royal romance type that looks to have been covered very thoroughly by your mum's writing.

Particularly intriguing to me also is why, when someone presumably builds a bit of a 'name' and following for themselves via such a prodigious output, they would feel the need to hide behind so many pseudonyms – when surely each one means restarting one's reputation from scratch. I mean, I can sort of understand why a romance novelist might switch moniker to publish a hard-boiled detective story, but by the time you're onto the sixth or seventh pseudonym for relatively slight changes of literary tack I start to wonder why it wouldn't have made more sense to just use the same name, or at least keep it down to a mere two or three.

[Sporting]

Different publishing companies insisted on different names, it was never a case of hiding. Why they insisted I'm not sure.

[Various Artist]

That's very interesting! (I use the term "hiding" generically, not as any sort of jibe at your mother I hasten to add.)

Could it be perhaps that each company simply prefers to create its own unique 'brand' they can market and don't have to share with anyone else? Goodness knows there's enough examples out there, up to and including potentially replacing the author in due course: bringing in other people to keep writing under the same 'house name' on a continuing production line for decades on end, as with Virginia (VC) Andrews to take a particularly notable example. Or Carolyn Keene who supposedly has been writing the Nancy Drew novels for 90 years now.