Gallery: Speedy Scribes: The Price 5 Writers Paid for Flash Fiction
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### A Clockwork Orange England lacked a dystopian vision. Anthony Burgess lacked cash. After three weeks of work, our droog rectified the situation. __Pace:__ 2,785 words/day __Price:__ An albatross. As Burgess himself wrote: "The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate."
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### On the Road Jack Kerouac typed his epic beatnik adventure on a 120-foot-long roll of paper in 20 days. Legend has it that he was hopped up on Benzedrine, but it was actually just coffee. __Pace:__ 5,770 words/day __Price:__ No time for punctuation!
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### The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this in less than a week, inspired by a nightmare. __Pace:__ 4,343 words/day __Price:__ A bruised ego. Stevenson burned his first draft after his wife critiqued it.
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### The Snow Was Black Georges Simenon churned out each of his 75 Inspector Maigret novels in less than two weeks. The Snow Was Black sold 850,000 copies in the US. __Pace:__ 3,640 words/day __Price:__ Simenon wrote in French and had no time to certify the English versions, resulting in some clunky translations. ("He was shiny. He was always shiny.")
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### Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury had two noisy kids in his tiny home, so he rented a typewriter in the UCLA library for 10 cents an hour. The ticking meter spurred him to write this classic in nine frantic days. __Pace:__ 5,086 words/day __Price:__ As one New York Times critic put it, "This is no precisely designed work of fiction."
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