Writing Length

E.G. Gammon · Mar 29, 2005

For those of you who have written a novel(s), what's the average length of time it took you to write it/(them)?

And for those of us who are still working on our novels, how long do you think it will take (or how long have you given yourself) to write/finish your first book?

I am working on a novel series (8 books) and I plan on taking April 1, 2005 - June 30, 2005 to map out the entire series (put together a detailed outline of what needs to happen, where and everything in between) and then I plan to start writing Book One July 1, 2005 and finish writing it (the first draft) by April 1, 2006 (9 months, April 1 being one year exactly after my progress website's debut).

Julie Worth · Mar 29, 2005

One to six months for a first draft. Two months to two years for revisions. Good luck with this ambitions scheme. I can’t imagine locking myself into even one book, much less eight. I sure hope you've already sold it.

Nateskate · Mar 29, 2005

That's a lot of books! Depending on creativity and speed of typing, it's possible to write a book in several months. However, I find that I couldn't do that without a tremendous amount of re-writing and revisions.

E.G. Gammon · Mar 29, 2005

In regards to my project, it is a story I have been developing for over seven years (originally a network soap opera and recently converted into a novel series). So, I pretty much know the whole story, I just need to organize all my writing from the past seven years and group everything together, map out what needs to go where, and make any changes to the story that need to be made due to the conversion process from a visual, dialogue-driven tv show to a novel series.

Unfortunately I haven't sold it yet, but I hope to once the first book is done. I'll work on Book Two once I start sending out the completed Book One.

Roger J Carlson · Mar 29, 2005

I wrote my first novel (a 40,000 word juvenile) in ten weeks -- 1 hour a day Monday through Friday and 4-6 hours on Saturday. Turns out, that was the First Draft (I thought it was done). It took another nine months to rewrite it. I've since rewritten sections of it on and off for the last two years.

It took me ten months to write the first draft of my second novel (125,000 word fantasy). This book has already gone through a second draft and I am now working on the third revision. It's hard to say, exactly, how long this has taken, because it's all intermixed with rewrites of the first novel, but it's safe to say, I'm into my second year on this book.

Seems to me, the length of time to write a book depends on two things: 1) how many words you can type per day, and 2) how close those words are to finished copy.

In the case of my first book, I thought the first draft WAS the final copy. I thought, "Man! I could write 5 books a year at this rate." (I was giving myself a week off between projects.) I soon discovered that was a *tad* optimistic.

jdkiggins · Mar 29, 2005

EG,

The first novel I wrote took me forever to finish. I began writing it at a young age and ended up editing, rewriting and reworking the entire novel after my mom ask me how much of it was true.

That's a true story. So that one took me a total of 15 years.

I have two other novels, that because of the subject matter, only took me six months to write both. I'm not sure they'll ever see daylight, but who knows.

My fourth novel I began writing in a hotel room in the evenings after attending workshops at a writer's conference. By the end of the weekend I'd handwritten five or six chapters. I finished it within a month of that conference.

I am currently working on two other novels; one horror/thriller of my own, and a sequel to a romance that was co-authored with a friend. The thriller is my current WIP which I posted an excerpt in Idol. Since entering the contest I've written four more chapters. Hope to have it completed before the end of May. I don't know if I'll ever get back to the romance sequel, it just doesn't do much for me.

I will add, though, if I do get an interested publisher, he'll know there's at least five books already completed.

Joanne

alaskamatt17 · Mar 29, 2005

Time

I wrote my first novel (80,000 words, fantasy) in about two months. Since it was mostly just for practice, I've given up trying to revise it into a publishable piece.

My second novel is in the eighth draft, one year after I began the rough draft. It took me two months to finish the rough draft, which was almost 115,000 words. It's been fluctuating a lot since then. At one point I had it down to <100,000 words, but it's now back up to 107,000. I think the additions really help, though.

maestrowork · Mar 29, 2005

My first novel: Got the idea back in 1998 when I was taking Creative Writing classes. Wrote the first chapter in November, 2001. Showed it to couple friends and got good feedback -- made me want to finish the darn thing.

I finished the first draft in August 2003. Finished what I thought was the final draft in November 2003 (exactly two years since I started writing it): 95000 words. Sent out first query in Feb, 2004. Meanwhile, I conceived the idea for my second novel around October, 2003 and started on that in March 2004.

I did a few more revisions on the first novel between March 2004 and September 2004. Final word count: around 75000 words.

It got accepted in November 2004, exactly three years after I started writing it.

I'm still writing my second novel.

(What can I say? I'm a slow writer, not particularly prolific)

Torin · Mar 29, 2005

It can really vary. I've been playing with an epic for five or six years and most of it is still in rough draft form and I keep finding other tangents for various characters. One day, I'll whip it into shape.

My first novel, which I wrote in a novel challenge in '99, took about four months for the first draft and another six or seven or so for the finished product. I just reached a point where I couldn't make it better, only different, and sent it out to epublishers because it felt like the right thing to do.

My current novel, I wrote during NaNo 2004, so 25 days for a 50K word rough draft. It's been out to an agent, who commented favourably, asked for a revision and to see the revised version, which is now on its way back to her. We'll see what happens after that. I wrote the sequel to it in February, but haven't worked on rewriting it at all just yet, but I'm bogged down in the third book in that series. I need to go back to the beginning, I think and find out where I derailed myself.

Good luck with your project.

MarkEsq · Mar 29, 2005

as for me...

My first novel took three months to write (65,000 words, mystery) and is now sitting with an agent (fingers crossed). I suppose I averaged about two hours a day - having been a journalist and now a lawyer I am very used to sitting down and typing madly for short periods, so while I wouldn't say I am "prolific" I would say that I can put down a lot on paper in a short time. And of course it's all perfect right out of the gate....

Mistook · Mar 29, 2005

I started my WIP in January 2004.

If you look at word-count alone, I wrote the equivalent of three novels last year... without ever finishing the story. Partly this was because I was still finding the story (and I found a few others in the process) and mostly it was because I was still developing my style.

I started again from scratch in February, with a fresh re-write.

I envisioned the novel having five "parts", and while working on Part One, I wrote 30,000 words in a single month. Unfortunately, that's nearly half a novel right there! I'm happy with the results, but I'm going to have to hack that off and make it a separate novel. A prequel I guess.

In the last two weeks I started in on the "main" story. I took a week off work last week, so I had a huge advantage, but again, I'm up to 30,000 words.

The next 30 to 60,000 words will take longer, because I have to be very careful how I proceed. There's a lot of backstory that has to be worked in, and there's even more "front-story" to resolve, and if I don't do it exactly right, this novel's going to be a trainwreck.

All that said, I plan to have it finished by July, revised by October, and ready to mail by December (if I can find an agent.)

SRHowen · Mar 29, 2005

My WIP took 32 days for the first draft. The one before took 4 months to write and 6 months to edit.

Shawn

alaskamatt17 · Mar 29, 2005

Mistook, isn't it a pain when you have to re-start from scratch?

I had to do that with my last book, after I'd gone 180 pages into it. I guess that's not as bad as having three full novels written and then starting over, but it frustrated me that I just reached a dead-end.

Oh well, the re-write has turned out much better than the old version ever could have been.

HConn · Mar 29, 2005

I do 1K or 1.5K words a day when I'm writing the first draft. I miss maybe one day in ten due to illness, exhaustion or family stuff. And the books are under 100K words long. Not very long.

Unfortunately, the outlining can take two weeks to months, and rewriting takes me forever.

Natalia · Mar 29, 2005

hmmm

I think average is a tough word to try to use here. Some people write their books in a few months... others take years to finish them. Which one gets published... who knows?

It also depends on whether you write full time or have other jobs, etc...

I am not rushing myself but I am definitely not treating my art like a hobby either... (credit for that phrase doesn't lie with me lol )

:poke:

Mistook · Mar 29, 2005

alaskamatt17 said:
Mistook, isn't it a pain when you have to re-start from scratch?

I had to do that with my last book, after I'd gone 180 pages into it. I guess that's not as bad as having three full novels written and then starting over, but it frustrated me that I just reached a dead-end.

Oh well, the re-write has turned out much better than the old version ever could have been.

Actually, having come to writing from a background in recording music, I'd say it's far easier, and takes far less time to re-write (or re-record) than to try and "repair" something that's already there.

Anatole Ghio · Mar 29, 2005

Mistook said:
Actually, having come to writing from a background in recording music, I'd say it's far easier, and takes far less time to re-write (or re-record) than to try and "repair" something that's already there.

I agree. If the foundation is solid, reworking is feasable and will more likely be time well spent.

If the foundation is bad, it will be a waste of time trying to rewrite. Better to spend your energy where the payoff is higher. Either completely rewrite, or move on. Maybe come back later, with a fresh angle or approach.

- Anatole

Terra Aeterna · Mar 29, 2005

I've written two novel drafts, one 80K and one 60K in six weeks each. One took me about six months to revise after that and the other I'm still revising on, but I think total it's going to have about 6 months of revising time as well. We'll see if either one of these is saleable.

After saying all that, I have to say I think that you write as fast as *you* write and none of our experiences or guesstimations are going to help you one bit find out how fast you write on this particular project. Pro writers have to turn out product at a predictable and fairly rapid speed, but it might take the rest of us some time to work up to pro speed. I've known "hobby" novelists who have been working on the same project for 15 years. As in most things about writing, your mileage may vary.

Mistook · Mar 29, 2005

Anatole Ghio said:
I agree. If the foundation is solid, reworking is feasable and will more likely be time well spent.

If the foundation is bad, it will be a waste of time trying to rewrite. Better to spend your energy where the payoff is higher. Either completely rewrite, or move on. Maybe come back later, with a fresh angle or approach.

- Anatole

Just to clarify my previous post, I meant, if the first draft has... global flaws in it - then it's easier to re-write from scratch. If we're talking about the normal revision/editing process that takes place after a good first draft, that's a different thing altogether.

As far as having a bad foundation, yes I agree with you, Anatole. My original drafts had a good foundation... but it required a lot of excavation to find that foundation.

I started out with waaaaay more than enough material for one novel, and I had to go through a long process to find the one story that I'm focused on now. I could have peiced it together out of excerpts from all the original material, and filled in the gaps, but that would have been awful.

Still, I'll never see last year as a waste of time, because I now have the buds of perhaps ten future stories, and I've found the one I want to tell first. I also developed a style I'm comfortable with, which makes writing that much easier.

alaskamatt17 · Mar 29, 2005

Mistook said:
I started out with waaaaay more than enough material for one novel, and I had to go through a long process to find the one story that I'm focused on now. I could have peiced it together out of excerpts from all the original material, and filled in the gaps, but that would have been awful.

I understand you on this one. When I was about a fifth of the way through the outline for my first sci-fi novel, I realized I already had 120,000 words, and they don't print books that are 600,000 words long as one volume. So I chopped off that first fifth and managed to make a suitable ending for it. I've sent out query letters to a few agents, but none of them seem interested in even looking at a sample of my writing (other than the letter, of course). It is a crazy idea, though, so I don't blame them.

mistri · Mar 30, 2005

The novel I've just finished writing took five months overall (November - March), though I took December off. It's 112,000 words. It still needs editing, of course, which will take me some time (but not too much, I hope).

I find that if I persevere in writing as often as I can, I can write fairly quickly. In past projects I've written a lot over a month or so, but then have fallen into bad habits where I've only written when I felt like it - resulting in only a few thousand every month or so. For me, discipline and a daily/monthly word count was the key to writing a novel in a relatively short time.

Jamesaritchie · Mar 30, 2005

Average

EGGammon said:
For those of you who have written a novel(s), what's the average length of time it took you to write it/(them)?

And for those of us who are still working on our novels, how long do you think it will take (or how long have you given yourself) to write/finish your first book?

I am working on a novel series (8 books) and I plan on taking April 1, 2005 - June 30, 2005 to map out the entire series (put together a detailed outline of what needs to happen, where and everything in between) and then I plan to start writing Book One July 1, 2005 and finish writing it (the first draft) by April 1, 2006 (9 months, April 1 being one year exactly after my progress website's debut).

I'm not sure "average time" has much meaning when it comes to writing a novel. My first published novel took three weeks to write. My last took six months to write. So much depends on the particular novel, and on what else is happening at the time.

If I have nothing else to write, no other deadlines, no health problems, and work only on a given novel, I can't conceive of it taking more than six months to write any novel, start to finish. But other writing can get in the way, and right now I'm having severe health problems, and hand problems, so writing more than three to five pages a day is rough.

But even at 1,000 words per day, the first draft will be finished in a bit under six months, and the final draft in well under nine.

James D. Macdonald · Mar 30, 2005

My fastest for a published novel was around 56 hours, but I didn't do anything else (except drink coffee) during that time, and it was a short book. (I also had a ten-page outline to work from.)

Another took around two years, but I was writing a lot of other things at the time, and had other things going on in my life, and that one had a lot of false starts. (As in, got to chapter four, decided that This Isn't Working and went back and started all over again.)

Greatest number of novels I've ever written and sold in a year is four. Most years I do two a year. That supports my lifestyle.

zizban · Mar 30, 2005

My novels clock in at between 40,000-50,000 words and take me a year to write. Idon't worry about the length as much as the quality of the tale. Does t tell the tale, does it get to the point?

Velleity · Mar 30, 2005

It took me three and a half years to get a working draft of my WIP -- about a year and a half if you subtract the times I stalled out for months on end (which I don't). About five months to get from a 65k brainstorming draft to a 155k working draft.

I'm guessing it'll take about another year to finish revisions.

Speed would be a nice skill to learn right about now. Bleah.

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