At least, that’s part of John Scalzi‘s opinion in his entry into the ongoing debate regarding how long is too long (or, alternatively, how short is to short) an amount of time to be working on a particular piece of fiction.

I mean, look: George R.R. Martin took five years to write A Feast For Crows; I took three months to write Old Man’s War. Both books got nominated for the Hugo, and both books got beat by Spin, which I rather strongly suspect was written by Bob Wilson in a space of time that was longer than three months but shorter than five years. To the extent that the Hugos are an arbiter of quality writing at all, what does this tell us about how long it takes to make good writing? If you are thinking to yourself “why, not a goddamned thing! Not a goddamned thing at all!” then congratulations, you’ve landed on truth.

Thanks go to to Wil Wheaton for pointing out this nugget of superb enlightenment.