Raw data: novel lengths and novelist age and productivity

If you think of a favorite author whose wordcount or productivity or age at publication you know—please add the information into this thread. Let’s together make this a growing, useful thread containing actual real data, which everyone is free to interpret any way they like.

Kindly refrain from “surely you are not implying” passive aggressive tantrums, and the like. If you feel discussing actual data is a crime against the art/craft—kindly make a separate thread to vent.


LENGTHS

Clive Barker: The Hellbound Heart—30 000 words; The Great and Secret Show—203 000; Abarat—104 000 words
Dean Koontz: Whispers—178 000 words; Strangers—260 000 words; Breathless—76 000 words
Stephen King: The Stand—473 000 words, Salem’s Lot—155 000 words
Graham Masterton: The Manitou—60 000 words; Death Dream—106 000 words; A Terrible Beauty—104 000 words
James Patterson: Double Cross—72 000 words; The Beach House—64 000 words; 3rd Degree—65 000 words
Ian Fleming: Casino Royale—48 000 words; Dr. No—70 000 words; Diamonds are Forever—71 000 words
Scott Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and the Damned—130 000 words; This Side of Paradise—87 000 words
Thomas Harris: Silence of the Lambs—96 000 words
Robert McCammon: They Thirst—203 000 words; Swan Song—304 000 words; Boy’s Life—205 000 words
William Peter Blatty: The Exorcist—90 000 words
Peter Benchley: Jaws—60 000 words
Tom Clancy: Executive Orders—460 000 words; The Bear and the Dragon—380 000 words; Clear and Present Danger—260 000 words.
Robert Ludlum: The Bourne Identity--185 000 words; The Bourne Ultimatum--245 000 words; The Bourne Supremacy--230 000 words.
Frederick Forsyth: The Negotiator--160 000 words; The Fist of God--196 000 words.


PRODUCTIVITY

About once a decade
Mario Puzo
Thomas Harris
William Peter Blatty
Tom Wolfe

About twice/thrice a decade
Dan Brown
Robert Harris
Martin Amis

About once every 2-3 years
Neil Gaiman
Clive Barker
Frederick Forsyth

About once a year
John Saul
Lee Child
Terry Pratchett

About twice a year
Stephen King
Dean Koontz
Graham Masterton

Veeery prolific
Philip Jose Farmer
Philip K Dick
Poul Anderson
Andre Norton
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Nora Roberts
Daniele Steel
John Ringo
David Drake


WRITING SPEED:

John Saul: Focused bursts of work allow for up to ten months a year of slow collection of ideas for the next project.
Source:

I generally spend about four hours a day at the word processor. And it takes me about two months to write a full-length novel. But of course it takes a year to think up a good idea!

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Lee Child:the yearly novel takes him half a year at around 6h a day--only half a year left to chill completely.
Source:

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until "The End."

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Dean Koontz: Source:

A very long novel, like FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE can take a year. A book like THE GOOD GUY, six months.

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Ian Fleming: wrote James Bond novels over winter weeks in a Jamaica beach house (the Goldeneye, natch), at 3-4 h a day, swimming and napping in the remaining hours.
Source:

And for the next many years, Ian would continue to follow this elaborate, yet simple, writing schedule and complete a new Bond novel at Goldeneye each winter

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Michael Moorcock: Michael Moorcock and his three-day novel completion from sentence 1 to 'the end' bursts. A wonderful system of spending a week in bed while outlining everything and then attacking the keyboard in an uninterrupted frenzy of swords, gods, magical artifacts, and multiverse reincarnations.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ck-hari-kunzru
http://www.wetasphalt.com/?q=content...chael-moorcock


NOVELIST AGE AT FIRST PUBLICATION

Stephen King—27 years of age—Carrie
Dean Koontz—23 years of age—Star Quest
Ken Folett—25 years of age—The Big Needle
Robert McCammon—26 years of age—Baal
Michael Crichton—24 years of age— Odds On
Tom Clancy—36 years of age—Red Storm Rising
Scott Fitzgerald—24 years of age—This Side of Paradise
Robert Ludlum—44 years of age—The Scarlatti Inheritance
Lee Child—42 years of age—Killing Floor
Sidney Sheldon—53 years of age—The Naked Face
John Flannagan—61 years of age—The Ruins of Gorlan