The above posts have confirmed my experience: there are two ways to write a novel and the time differences are immense. One way, my favourite, is to go at it hell for leather and not stop until it's finished. You live and breathe the characters and the plot and write whole great chunks in your head as you walk the dog and do the washing up. The actual writing bit then is simply a question of how much typing you can do before the RSI
really kicks in and/or you need to go to the toilet. To write like this I think you have to write at least 2,000 words per day and more like 4,000 is better. I wrote a 100k word novel this way in about 5 weeks. Sounds quick, but actually the writing itself probably only took a couple of hours per day. Of course now I need to hide it away for a couple of months so it's completely out of my head when I go back to edit it.
The other way is to take your time- to write slowly and carefully, weighing and editing each word as you go. I can't do it like this, though I admire people who can. One of the reasons I can't do it like this is the same reason I can't
read a book too slowly- because I would lose track of character and plot and so forth and have to keep going back to remind myself. And then each time I went back I'd notice something I didn't like and would have to edit it. So then I'd wonder if that still worked with something I'd written before so I'd have to go back and edit
that and, yes, I can imagine how it could easily end up taking years.
Me, I wouldn't have the patience though.
Oddly enough, btw, I wrote
a blog post on this a while back.
