How long does it take you to write a novel?

[DivaNicoletta]

How long does it take you to write a novel, before editing, so really the first draft? I just completed a shorter one (65,000 words) in about two weeks, and started right in on another one. I think my problem is that I have way to many things that I would like to write, and I get in a sort of 'zone' where things just pour out of me, and I am writing like 5,000 words a day, my mind moves faster then my hands that are typing.I've never experianced writers block. Anyone else have this experiance? How long does it take you to write the first draft of your novel? Does it all gush out of you, or do you plot it out?

[jen.nifer]

How long does it take you to write a novel, before editing, so really the first draft? I just completed a shorter one (65,000 words) in about two weeks, and started right in on another one.

Two weeks? Holy cow.

That shoots down my very recent "finished your book yet?" topic in the other section then.

[Jamesaritchie]

I wrote my first one, start to finish, in exactly twenty-one days on a typewriter. There wasn't time for a second draft, so it sold as was. I'll never write one that fast again. For first drafts only, I think about three months is right for me, if it's an average size novel. Then another month for the next draft, which may be the final one.

[pepperlandgirl]

I've been working on my current novel since Sep 20, and I've got 35k words done. But I've also written one novella (20K words) and one long-short story (10K) in that time, plus I've been working on edits. I figure if I gave all my attention to my current novel, it would have been finished by now.

[AdamH]

I tried writing a couple of clunkers when I was younger. The ideas seemed interesting in the time but turned out to be duds. The first one took about 6 months. It really did suck though. The second one was this crazy space/horror/conspiracy epic that I never finished. I never intend to. So that time frame is indefinite.

The one I'm working on now after years simmering in the back of my skull has taken me about a year from first draft...a long pause...some reworking...another pause...and now as I'm tinkering with it. No excuses really. I just don't want to rush it. Plus I get distracted from my task easily...oh look another new thread! :)

[triceretops]

I wrote my first one, start to finish, in exactly twenty-one days on a typewriter. There wasn't time for a second draft, so it sold as was. I'll never write one that fast again. For first drafts only, I think about three months is right for me, if it's an average size novel. Then another month for the next draft, which may be the final one.

This is just about identicle with my pace, but I get to write all day long every day, so my books take nine weeks, with one month for doing 3 revision drafts.
I avarage 2,500 words a day seven days a week with no time off.

Tri

[Jamesaritchie]

I wrote my first one, start to finish, in exactly twenty-one days on a typewriter. There wasn't time for a second draft, so it sold as was. I'll never write one that fast again. For first drafts only, I think about three months is right for me, if it's an average size novel. Then another month for the next draft, which may be the final one.

This is just about identicle with my pace, but I get to write all day long every day, so my books take nine weeks, with one month for doing 3 revision drafts.
I avarage 2,500 words a day seven days a week with no time off.

Tri



That 2,500 words per day is what I shoot for. My novel writing time is often interrupted by time I have to spend writing short stories and articles, especially the last four years, so novel wriiting pace is much slower right now.

But there seems to be a fairly large number of pro writers who aim at the 2,500 word per day mark. For me, it's enough to produce a decent amount of writing, but not so much that I burn out, or simply wear out.

Of course, if all the forum words I wrote were novels, I'd be incredibly prolific.

But this is ever so much easier than writing fiction.

[triceretops]

But there seems to be a fairly large number of pro writers who aim at the 2,500 word per day mark. For me, it's enough to produce a decent amount of writing, but not so much that I burn out, or simply wear out.
Yep, that's the ticket. That 2,500 is a good long push with a lot of satisfaction. But not so much that I'm weary at the end and start hackin' it. When you're tired is the time to stop, other wise I find myself cheating and writing lean.

James, I'm surprised you have time to knock out some shorts along with this routine. I've been thinking about some magazine fiction, or e-fiction, cause I used to write a lot of it 15 years ago. Matter of fact I'd love to get back in the SFWA again, and I also need the quick sales for postage money, seeing as how I'm broke all the time. But I dread the market research here--most of my fav zines are gone except for Amazing, Not One of Us, Space and Time, and a half dozen others. Are the shorts for zines still paying around 1-3 cents per word? I know Analog is still out there along with the mag of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I seem to remember they paid a little more.

Tri

[Stacey Sweeney]

I'm so jealous! I have two kids under four, plus my dh works 12 hour days, six days a week. I have to do 100% of everything around here so that when he's home, he can sleep or play with the kids. My first novel took six months, and I'm still working on the fine tuning. I write greeting cards and short stories while the kids play, but I can't really concentrate on anything detailed. Then at night, (like now) I can work for about an hour before my brain starts turning to mush and my writing reverts to that of a two year old. So....I don't think this novel will go much faster than the first. My goal is 50 pages in a month. Plus trying to keep up on the little stuff (gretting cards, magazine articles, etc).
Someday if I get to where I'm making money at this, my sweet dh will be able to cut back his hours and I'll get to make this a real career. Or, I'll hire a mother's helper. If I ever REALLY make money, I'm going to hire a maid. I hate cleaning with a passion. I'd love to have someone come clean for me a day or two a week. Well, my brain is way past mush mode, so I ought to quit rambling now.

[stace001]

I'm with you Stacey. I have a five year old who is so active, just watching him makes my muscles hurt. Trying to keep up with him pretty much takes up most of my time. The first draft of my first novel (written when he was a new born) took me about 6 months to write. The first draft of my second, (when he was about two) took 5 months, and my third, which i'm currently writing, took me 4 months. I don't really have a time frame i work with, I just like to make the story as interesting as possible, however long it takes to write.

[Tiaga]

Sometimes all frickin day!
Seriously it depends on the prep time and when I've accumulated enough fact to mix with my fiction. 3-6 months 3 months on rewrite and editing. 90,540 words

[williemeikle]

My novels tend to all come in at around the same length for some reason, around 75000 to 80000 words, and each takes around 10 weeks .... 8 weeks to get it all down, 2 weeks to edit and polish.

I do take anywhere from 3 months to 6 months rest between novels though.... working on ideas, articles, short stories, and the occassional screenplay during this time.

Willie
http://www.willie.meikle.btinternet.co.uk

[Flapdoodle]

How long does it take you to write a novel, before editing, so really the first draft? I just completed a shorter one (65,000 words) in about two weeks, and started right in on another one. I think my problem is that I have way to many things that I would like to write, and I get in a sort of 'zone' where things just pour out of me, and I am writing like 5,000 words a day, my mind moves faster then my hands that are typing.I've never experianced writers block. Anyone else have this experiance? How long does it take you to write the first draft of your novel? Does it all gush out of you, or do you plot it out?

I recently finished 82,000 in a month - but I stop occasionally to make sure my plot's OK and go back and rewrite earlier pieces.

Then I leave it for 6months/a year before going back to it, so it seems fresh & I can see problems.

[KTC]

I just completed a shorter one (65,000 words) in about two weeks

Well, then I would say anywhere from 2 weeks to 65 years.

[ANNIE]

I'm so jealous! I have two kids under four, plus my dh works 12 hour days, six days a week. I have to do 100% of everything around here so that when he's home, he can sleep or play with the kids. My first novel took six months, and I'm still working on the fine tuning. I write greeting cards and short stories while the kids play, but I can't really concentrate on anything detailed. Then at night, (like now) I can work for about an hour before my brain starts turning to mush and my writing reverts to that of a two year old. So....I don't think this novel will go much faster than the first. My goal is 50 pages in a month. Plus trying to keep up on the little stuff (gretting cards, magazine articles, etc).
Someday if I get to where I'm making money at this, my sweet dh will be able to cut back his hours and I'll get to make this a real career. Or, I'll hire a mother's helper. If I ever REALLY make money, I'm going to hire a maid. I hate cleaning with a passion. I'd love to have someone come clean for me a day or two a week. Well, my brain is way past mush mode, so I ought to quit rambling now.

That sounds familiar, my kids are now 7& 8 but there is homework, baths, and extracurricular activity to shuttle them too, it leaves very little time to write, oh yeah let's not forget the 5 horses, a barn that need cleaned every day, 4 cats, 2 dogs and a husband who works 12 hours and I am still work part time.

[victoriastrauss]

Two and a half years for a novel of around 200,000 words, including research and related stuff. I write 5-6 days a week, for anywhere from 2 to 8 hours a day, with a couple of weeks off here and there for good behavior.

I edit as I go. It takes me longer to produce a finished draft, but once I'm done, I'm done.

- Victoria

[Jamesaritchie]

James, I'm surprised you have time to knock out some shorts along with this routine.

I have to break my time up accordingly. For the last four years, writing anything has been a struggle, but while my health is still dreck, I have, just in the last two months, reached the point where I seem to be able to write full-time again.

Two sessions for writing, a long one in the morning, and another long one in the afternoon, broke by an hour and a half for lunch and a long walk. The morning session is used for novels, and the afternoon session for short material.

I take a couple of hours late in the evening to read, and an hour to research markets and the like. I ought to let my agent handle my short fiction and articles, but with the exception of some handful of places that really demand an agent, I prefer to do this myself. I like handling short material, and interacting with editors.

Are the shorts for zines still paying around 1-3 cents per word? I know Analog is still out there along with the mag of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I seem to remember they paid a little more.

Tri






There are still plenty of 1-3 cents per word markets around, but the pro rate for science fiction and fantasy is now a minimum of five cents per word.

Analog, Asimov's and F&SF are still around, and pay from 6-9 cents per word, depending on whether or not it's your first story, and on the length of the piece. The best paying SF market is probably sci fiction, an online deal. http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/ They pay twenty cents per word. Realms of Fantasy http://www.rofmagazine.com/ is a good magazine, and pay starts there at a nickel per word, and moves up as you make more sales.

Orson Scott Card has just started an online mag that pays six cents per word up to $500. http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=content&article=submissions

But I usually write for the children's markets, where pay starts at twenty cents per word, and write even more for the outdoor market where the pay ranges from twenty-five to seventy-five cents per words. Some of the mainstream markets also pay very well, with pay going up to about $1-2 per word.

I like to write for many very different magazines, but most of my money comes from the children's market and the outdoor market. Children's fiction is pretty short, so the average story there brings me roughly $200-400, depending on length and pay rate. The outdoor market pays better, and takes longer stories, and stories there range from $500-1,500, with my best ever being just over $2,000.

I don't write many articles these days, partly because of time, and partly because I don't enjoy article writing nearly as much. I mostly write columns, essays, and personal opinion pieces, and pay there is all over the place.

[Cathy C]

The best I ever did was this last ms. 100K in 17 days. :eek: Deadlines don't permit frailties, even when unexpected (like multiple brown recluse spider bites that kicked my proverbial butt.) But never again. It took three visits to the chiropractor to get my neck back in shape. I don't care HOW ergonomic your workspace is, eventually the shoulders will give out.


My preferred rate is 3,000 per day (keeper words, of course.)

[keltora]

How long does it take you to write a novel, before editing, so really the first draft? I just completed a shorter one (65,000 words) in about two weeks, and started right in on another one. I think my problem is that I have way to many things that I would like to write, and I get in a sort of 'zone' where things just pour out of me, and I am writing like 5,000 words a day, my mind moves faster then my hands that are typing.I've never experianced writers block. Anyone else have this experiance? How long does it take you to write the first draft of your novel? Does it all gush out of you, or do you plot it out?

Depends...

If not being interrupted by Life, The Universe and everything else, I can produce an 80,000 word novel in two to three weeks...

But, since I have a full time job and a social life, and often get interrupted by editors asking for rewrites of previously sold novels, it might take me a month or two.

And I am one who usually has three or four projects going...

I wrote a 2500 word short story in a little over an hour yesterday.

Laura J. Underwood

[victoriastrauss]

God, all you people make me feel incredibly inferior. I'm very aware that one reason my career isn't in better shape is because I can't write quickly. I never have been able to; all the tricks that people advise (word count logs, rewards) just slow me down. As do deadlines. Sometimes I'm OK with that, but most of the time I have to struggle with the ugly little voice that whispers, "If you were a real writer, you could write a book a year."

I guess you can only do what you can do.

- Victoria

[mollythemagnificent]

I wrote my first novel over a summer break when I was 14. It took about 3 months and was pretty lengthy, but since I pounded it out on an Apple IIe I was never sure of the word count. Novel #2 was about 75,000 words finished in three weeks, but that was also a summer break, when I wrote a chapter a day.

A chapter a day! I laugh at myself now.

My current (and rebranded "first") novel is 90,000 words (105,000 before revisions). I worked on it actively for about four months, but those periods of activity are summed up since June 2004 when I first scratched out a thread of plot on a napkin while flying to Toronto. Work and moving into a new house curtailed a lot of my time in the middle.

When I'm in an "active" period, I write about 2,500 words daily.

[Sharon Mock]

I'm also a slow worker. Took me about 3.5 years to get a usable rough draft of the current WIP. However, there were a couple of major stall-outs during that time, so probably about two years of BIC to generate roughly 150,000 words of prose. (It's shrunk with revision... somewhat...)

At this point I can write about 1500 words a day before my brain slows down. (When I started getting back into writing, I'd be lucky to get 500 words in a day.) I intend to attempt NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) this year to see if I can push that pace up a little bit.

[Jamesaritchie]

God, all you people make me feel incredibly inferior. I'm very aware that one reason my career isn't in better shape is because I can't write quickly. I never have been able to; all the tricks that people advise (word count logs, rewards) just slow me down. As do deadlines. Sometimes I'm OK with that, but most of the time I have to struggle with the ugly little voice that whispers, "If you were a real writer, you could write a book a year."

I guess you can only do what you can do.

- Victoria



I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I write fast is because I have to write fast. When you count on writing to put food on the table and a roof over your head, and you aren't Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, writing fast and regularly is the only way to keep the wolf from teh door.

But I don't really consider myself a terribly fast writer, at least not compared to many. About seven to eight hundred words per hour is my limit under the best of conditions, and five hundred words per hour is much more like normal.
But even four hundred words per hour easily give me the first draft of a novel in three months.

I've heard it said that a pro writer should be able to write 1,000 words per hour, day in and day out, but I can't begin to do that.

Most of my speed comes from how many hours I put in, rather than how much I write per hour.

I can't remember the math exactly, and I'm too tired be be sure I'm getting it right in my head, but I think one word per minute, five hours per day, still gives you more than 100,000 words in eleven months.

So I concentrate on getting enough hours in, rather than worrying about how many words per hour I write.

[Dru]

Wow! :Hail:

Well I operate much more slowly than some of you. I average 1000-1500 a day for 6 days of the week when I'm able to concentrate. My job fluctuates from full time to full time plus, so if I have the chance to get an hour in a day of solid, creative writing time, I'm happy.

That still works out to around 300,000 words annually if life, universe and everything do not get in the way, but they do, and on a regular basis. :Hammer:

My goal for the year is to get my first novel written, edited and ready for pub within one calendar year. The icing is that I'm also concurrently working on novels two and three. Number three will get a boot camp workout due to NaNo. Maybe one novel this year, two next year, and more the follow year if I can learn to streamline. Who knows.

Thanks for sharing everyone, this is a great motivator and educative thread!

[Tiaga]

God, all you people make me feel incredibly inferior.
I guess you can only do what you can do.

- Victoria


With all that you have accomplished it is I who am humble in your presence.

[bylinebree]

I thought your reply would end with ('all you people...) ...make me sick'! But 'inferior' is much nicer, though you don't need to be so hard on your creative-artist self.
Maybe this will help: I finished my 400 pg fantasy novel last week and it's only the first draft -- and I started it over 2 years ago, before my husband went on overseas duty. Life got in the way. Learned more along the way of HOW to write the dang thing, and then I HAD to go back and fix a few things that bugged me, before continuing. Some say not to do that, "just write the draft and don't revise." But it didn't work for me, because it was part of my disjointed-but-valid writing life.

Keep writing!

[jules]

My first novel took 6 years to finish first draft, but I did take a lot of long breaks from it.

My second (actually a rewrite of the same idea from scratch) took 18 months.

My best to date was 51,000 words in 30 days (NaNo last year), but that left me feeling rather burned out, and it took another 30 days to write the remaining 11,000 words of the draft.

My comfort zone seems to be at about 800-1,000 words per day, 4 days per week. At that rate, a draft is about 6 months' work.

[popmuze]

God, all you people make me feel incredibly inferior. I'm very aware that one reason my career isn't in better shape is because I can't write quickly. I never have been able to; all the tricks that people advise (word count logs, rewards) just slow me down. As do deadlines. Sometimes I'm OK with that, but most of the time I have to struggle with the ugly little voice that whispers, "If you were a real writer, you could write a book a year."

I guess you can only do what you can do.

- Victoria

I have the opposite take on your comment, as I come from the school where you might take all day to write one sentence and then the next day throw it out. Even though I've since overcome that problem, I'm still very suspicious of fast writing. Forget about the spelling mistakes, how can you develop strong characters and great sentences in what is essentially stream of consciousness writing?
I can see writing a fast first draft, if that were possible, but then many many many agonizing rewrites after that. Then let it sit. Then rewrite again. And again. Actually, to me writing fiction is much more about the rewrites than anything else.

[Cathy C]

Forget about the spelling mistakes, how can you develop strong characters and great sentences in what is essentially stream of consciousness writing?
I can see writing a fast first draft, if that were possible, but then many many many agonizing rewrites after that. Then let it sit. Then rewrite again. And again. Actually, to me writing fiction is much more about the rewrites than anything else.

I don't rewrite. By and large, I don't edit, because I don't do the stream of consciousness thing. My first draft is what goes to the editor. Every word is in my head because I'm reporting what is occurring on the big movie screen behind my eyes. It plays out like a script, including "scene" breaks (chapters) and all I'm doing is transcribing the action. I'm one of those backwards writers --- I plot the story and THEN write, although nothing is actually plotted on paper. A person watching me would presume that it's stream of consciousness. But it's not.

Don't worry -- I know I'm strange... ;)

[brinkett]

I take about a year from blank page to finished manuscript.

[Jamesaritchie]

I develop strong characters and great sentences in what is essentially stream of consciousness writing?
I.

Fast writing has nothing to do with stream of consciousness. Nothing at all. Nor does it take multiple drafts to get fast writing that's extremely well done, or characters that are fully developed and strong. Both these are false assumptions, usually made by people who write very slowly. And by people who haven't bothered to look back and see how most of the great writers of the ages did their thing.

You develop strong characters with fast writing the same way you do with slow writing. You just do it faster.

Go back through history and find the ten writers you think have the strongest characters, and have novels that have stood the test of time. I'll bet at least eight of them wrote very fast, and did no more than two drafts, if that.

Start with Shakespeare. You aren't suspicious of him, are you? He wrote some of his longest plays in only fourteen days, and bragged that he never changed a word. And if you can find stronger, better developed, more realistic characters than his, let me know.

Spelling mistakes? How long does it take to spell a word? I can spell as fast as I can write. Faster, actually.

Taking all day to write a sentence does not in any way make for a better sentence. It just makes for incredibly slow writing, and sentences that are no better than ones written quickly.

[popmuze]

Strange, that's how I write non-fiction, pretty much having a full comand of what I'm going to say and just saying it, without much rewriting. Maybe that's why I've been able to publish so much more non-fiction than fiction.

With fiction I can't go a day without rewriting what I wrote the day before.

[Sage]

When I know where I'm going, my writing seems to be about 2,500 words a day. But a lot of days I don't know exactly how a scene is going to play out, which means I'll take longer.

My two short stories that I wrote in a few hours were each about 2,000 words. The climax of my WIP is about 25,000 words that I wrote in ten days. My very first story was about 21,000 words, & it took me two weeks to write... but about a fourth of it was done on the first day (I remember 'cuz it was the last week before senior year & I was on campus & the only other friends there at the time were the English majors who wanted to kill me for writing more in one day than they had all summer). Other than those instances, I can only give you rough guesses, & nothing I've written has been published (everything before the novel I'm working on was written for friends).

My WIP is about 90,000 words, & I've been writing it since late January, though, & my last story that I finished (29,000 words) took me three years from the first scene I wrote of it to the last one, but it also wasn't something I ever worked on exclusively.

[arrowqueen]

I think this is a bit like asking 'How long is a bit of string?'

Everyone's different. Everyone's circumstances are different. If you're cooking, cleaning, shopping and looking after children/the elderly you're not going to be able to write as fast as someone who's able to lock themselves in their study all day and have their meals brought to them on a tray.

What does it matter if someone finishes their novel in a month and it takes you two years? Just keep writing. You'll get there.

And jolly, good luck to you!

[Jamesaritchie]

I think this is a bit like asking 'How long is a bit of string?'

Everyone's different. Everyone's circumstances are different. If you're cooking, cleaning, shopping and looking after children/the elderly you're not going to be able to write as fast as someone who's able to lock themselves in their study all day and have their meals brought to them on a tray.

!

Well, I think you can still write as fast, you just can't write as often. Though I've known a couple of women who could write three or four novels per year with a bunch of kids underfoot. Don't know how they did it. Duct tape and coat hangers, maybe. But it's amazing.

I wish I could get someone to bring me meals on a tray, though. That would simplify a lot. Right now I have to swivel my chair around, open up my college dorm size fridge, pull something out, and pop it in the microwave. It seems terribly unfair.

[DivaNicoletta]

Those of you with kids, how do you do it? I thought about having kids, but writing is really like a job for me, so while I would probably work at home, I would probably get a full time nanny just so I can write. I don't think I could write while watching 1 or 2 toddlers, I think that would drive me nuts. I really have to get in a 'space' where I can just totally get into the writing and that includes no interuptions.

[ANNIE]

Those of you with kids, how do you do it? I thought about having kids, but writing is really like a job for me, so while I would probably work at home, I would probably get a full time nanny just so I can write. I don't think I could write while watching 1 or 2 toddlers, I think that would drive me nuts. I really have to get in a 'space' where I can just totally get into the writing and that includes no interuptions.

Like everything else in life, you learn to adapt. You write when you can, not neccassarily when you want.

[DamaNegra]

well, it's kind of embarrasing, but the first novel I started writing has been 4 years in the making, I'm just not satisfyed with it and keep on rewriting it over and over again. I wrote another short novel (that still needs lots of revising and a translation to my language) in about three months, and I'm fairly satisfyed with it. I wrote half of another novel in about two months, but I realized that my ending sucked, so it also needs revision. My problem is that I lose inspiration and don't know what to write next, so I just write and write and it gets terribly boring. I still need a lot of practice in this.

[TheNightTerror]

I just finished my latest novel, it's 367 pages long, I did it in 30 days. My last novel was nearly 600 pages long, and it took me about 3 months. :o I usually don't end up working on a story for more than 2 months at a time, and they're almost always over 200 pages long. But, my latest creation ain't going to be left alone, methinks this is a good a story as any to try to publish. :D

[LloydBrown]

Well, you guys have encouraged and challenged me a bit. My goal per day was 2,000 sellable words, but I might have to bump it to up to 2,500 just to keep pace.

I'm sticking my fingers in my ears over Cathy C's post, though. 100k words in 17 days, no re-writing, little editing? That bar looks awfully high from down here.

[goatpiper]

This thread makes me remember an anecdote about James Joyce. His friend comes into his writing room and asks "How's the writing today, James?" and JJ replies "Horrible - I've only written seven words today" and his friend replies back "You should be happy - that's alot for you!"
My pace is abyssmal right now, but showing signs of improvement. It is the first time in years I've been writing regularly, however. I'd like to work up to about 3,000 words a day - that'd be awesome!!!

[scarletpeaches]

This thread makes me remember an anecdote about James Joyce. His friend comes into his writing room and asks "How's the writing today, James?" and JJ replies "Horrible - I've only written seven words today" and his friend replies back "You should be happy - that's alot for you!"
My pace is abyssmal right now, but showing signs of improvement. It is the first time in years I've been writing regularly, however. I'd like to work up to about 3,000 words a day - that'd be awesome!!!

I heard that after the friend commented that that was a lot for him, Joyce said, "But I don't know if they're in the right order!"

[Sage]

I heard that after the friend commented that that was a lot for him, Joyce said, "But I don't know if they're in the right order!"

:ROFL: :roll:

[Danger Jane]

Ummmm...about two months. School from seven to two, then sports for three hours, homework for three...and suddenly it's eleven and I have to get up in seven hours and repeat. But it's easiest on a first draft/first rewrite.

[Avalon]

Of my various attempts over the last five years, the last one took me nine months to get a completed first draft. That's fantasy, with worldbuilding, sociology, etc. I'm currently aiming for one year per book. Roughly three months for worldbuilding (mostly rambling and writing stories about characters and figuring out their environment), three months for outlining, three months for the draft itself (written from outline), and three months for revising. It seems to be working. I aim for 1000 words per day. Sometimes I get 1300. Sometimes I get 2000. Sometimes I get 250 -- but sometimes those 250 are a crucial 250 that unblock something or help me figure something out for downstream.

I hope that when (not if!) I'm able to do this full time, I'll be able to aim for 2000-2500 words per day. Right now, I'm only able to get in 1-2 hours per day, but I do it religiously.

[rhymegirl]

It took me 3 months to write my young adult novel, writing every night all summer a few years ago. Of course, it's only about 200 pages. I struggled with just one scene, a fight scene. That was very hard to write. I edit as I go along.

[inanna]

I'm finally hitting the home stretch, but I've been writing this novel for nearly 15 months. Of course, at close to 400,000 words, it turns out this novel is actually a series. *sigh*

I'm one of those edit-as-I-write people, plus I've been rewriting earlier chapters as I work on the new ones for a crit group. I started this manuscript while taking a novel writing course, and I had to turn in chapters for homework, so my perfectionism more or less compelled me to rewrite. I can't deal with letting people see raw first draft stuff--although since I edit as I write, it's not technically a first draft, but still...(Yes, I'm neurotic)

But like others here, I have two small boys that I single-parent, so my brain is basically mush by the time I get them to bed. I swear, if it weren't for Red Bull this book would not exist. I write for about 2-3 hours a day, six days a week, and now I have this monstrosity of a soap opera to split up into stand alone novels.

When I'm done, I'm putting it away for a bit and starting a completely different book. I'll shoot for 85,000-100,000 words with no major rewrites and try to finish it in two months. I can't wait.

ETA--It turns out I've been working on this for 17 months. What can I say--it's all a big blur at this point.

[arrowqueen]

I still don't think you can write as quickly when one part of your brain is subconsciously monitoring for screams/the sound of someone plummeting down the stairs/the deathly hush that presages even worse.

You can't get the same level of concentration.

[Dhewco]

It all depends on how much I can focus on what I'm writing. I did my most recent story in only five months. That's to rough draft completion, not final draft.


David

[Niesta]

Well, let's see -- my child is 2 years, four months old, so... two years, almost exactly, and not done yet. I am really really pushing to get it done by the end of this calendar year. A page a day is top pace for me these days, given that the toddler does not nap.

But you know, it's frustrating sometimes, but it's okay. Everything in my life is slowed down at this point -- I feel like I've had to learn to think in terms of geological time. I'll finish it by January, give myself a few months to rewrite, and have it out to agents by summertime. The goal is to get published at about the time the child is starting school -- the time I would no longer have an excuse to stay home and have no job. I want THIS to be my job, then.

Fingers crossed. Lots of uncertainties ahead, of course. At least I'll be able to write faster when the kid's in school!

[Supafly]

Hey, its been a few months since I've last posted. Anyway, I've finished three novels (not published yet, waiting a little longer), two on compute and one handwritten, which I suggest NOT to do. I think I'm developing carpal tunnel or something. My first one took a little over a year to do, including research because its a historical fiction and I wanted the Seige of Berlin to be a close to fact as possible. My handwritten one took longer, about two years to do, with a long break in the middle when I started work on two other books. My third book took just about two years to do. I have another book half way done that I'm adapting from a short story I wrote in fifth grade that I've work on off-and-on for that last three years.

While my time spent writing might seem like a lot of work, my books tend to be no shorter than 400 pages single-spaced. My longest one is 1500, single-spaced. I usually crank out about 4000 words or so on a good day, and about 1000-2000 on a bad day. Some days however, I don't have that fire to write, and I avoid writing on those days at all costs, because I know I'll write crap that I'll take out later on. Instead, I'll read a book I might have started or I'll study the subject I'm writing about, whether it be historical fiction or science fiction.

[Write4U2]

I don't rewrite. By and large, I don't edit, because I don't do the stream of consciousness thing. My first draft is what goes to the editor. Every word is in my head because I'm reporting what is occurring on the big movie screen behind my eyes. It plays out like a script, including "scene" breaks (chapters) and all I'm doing is transcribing the action. I'm one of those backwards writers --- I plot the story and THEN write, although nothing is actually plotted on paper. A person watching me would presume that it's stream of consciousness. But it's not.

Don't worry -- I know I'm strange... ;)

I don't think you're strange at all. It's what I do -- the big movie screen in my head thing. I write what the characters tell me they're doing within the plot I've written for them. Guess I play God with their destiny, because I know what the end will be, and I know (the plot) what's going to drive them. Sometimes they surprise me, though, because they act out and do all sorts of unexpected things! Brats!!!

I plot the story first, but always with the characters in mind. I create a timeline/plotline, like a big spreadsheet. I cross reference the characters and each of them has a thread on it.

If you start to write when you're older, say retirement age, you have to learn a lot of technical stuff all over again. That slows you down. You have to learn what constitutes GOOD writing. Technically speaking, I mean.

I had such a long learning curve as a writer, that it has taken me two years to write this MS. Some of that time includes travel to London/Oxfordshire and New York City to do research. I'm on the second draft/rewrite and it's still a hassle because I'm still learning new things, i.e. passive verbs, tell don't show. Since there is so much of the MS written in show/passive, it will take me another month or two to rewrite and smooth it out.

But it's fun.

I'm also an artist, and I dream of making this an illustrated novel. Perhaps with Illustrated Letters at the beginning of each chapter. That would be such fun.

[Gynn]

I've been working on the latest incarnation of my WIP for about 9 months. I usually get a page or so a night after work.

I still have much work to do! Snip Snip

[billyf027]

Hey, its been a few months since I've last posted. Anyway, I've finished three novels (not published yet, waiting a little longer), two on compute and one handwritten, which I suggest NOT to do. I think I'm developing carpal tunnel or something. My first one took a little over a year to do, including research because its a historical fiction and I wanted the Seige of Berlin to be a close to fact as possible. My handwritten one took longer, about two years to do, with a long break in the middle when I started work on two other books. My third book took just about two years to do. I have another book half way done that I'm adapting from a short story I wrote in fifth grade that I've work on off-and-on for that last three years.

While my time spent writing might seem like a lot of work, my books tend to be no shorter than 400 pages single-spaced. My longest one is 1500, single-spaced. I usually crank out about 4000 words or so on a good day, and about 1000-2000 on a bad day. Some days however, I don't have that fire to write, and I avoid writing on those days at all costs, because I know I'll write crap that I'll take out later on. Instead, I'll read a book I might have started or I'll study the subject I'm writing about, whether it be historical fiction or science fiction.
I have carpal tunnel in both hands and many other arm nerve injuries but write. Talk about self torture. It is ver hard. Fingers don't want to work with me. They go in all directions by themselves.

[elissa]

I have only written one novel, 97,000 words, and it took me five years. That doesn't mean I'm a slow writer, honestly. Just that I have a full-time job teaching (which sucks all the creative energy out of me), a four-year-old and an 18-month-old, and a host of other writing projects that got done in the same time frame. Usually when I get a minute to sit and write, I write about 1000 words in a session. After that, I can start to find that my writing isn't as precise, the imagery suffers, and my dialogue gets less meaningful.

Short stories usually go faster, since they're more bite-sized and I don't have to reacquaint myself with everything after a long absence from the project. My most recent short is just over 3,000 words, and I wrote it in two morning sittings, then spent a couple of hours total on making revisions here and there.

This thread is fascinating. I wish I could write full-time for just a couple of months and see what I could do.

[lucky8]

Oh wow, some of you guys are so lucky. What with working and maintaining some sort of social life I'm lucky to grab time for 1,000 words/day. I started my first novel on the 1st March and don't expect to get the first draft done until the end of August. Six months!! Things will probably be even worse next year when I go back to Uni, but I'll still fight to get my 1,000 words/day in.

[Charlie Horse]

Six to nine months for 1st draft. I don't rush, and I don't plan, so really first draft is more like a long flowing outline with some cool lines thrown in. But I do write everyday.

Of course I've got family, and then drug traficking is pretty much a full time job as well.

[Vandal]

It took me about 15 months to complete the first draft and about four months to get feedback and write the second.

I re-wrote the entire manuscript as YA in about five weeks.

[Enraptured]

Just for the first draft? So far my shortest time is 6 days (that was a NaNoWriMo novel) and my longest is about 2.5 months. But I do a very detailed outline, which can take me another few weeks to write; that might count as part of the first draft, since I tend to stick very closely to it.

Editing, however, takes much longer. :D

[jannawrites]

It took me just about a year for the writing, and three months for editing.

[Straka]

100K in 30 days is my current record. My first one was 182K and took me three years starting at the end of school into college.

Editing always takes me longer though.

[HourglassMemory]

I've been working on the same story for more than 3 years, which is also my first story.
I just love the idea and I've been trying to make it work.

[Reilly616]

I plan on my first draft being done by september, making it one year from the idea. But that is full time at scool aswell. I only wrote about 20,000 sepember to may. But june july and august should finish it. Revisions should take 3 months.

[dempsey]

Apparently a first draft by the seat of my pants takes four months.

I don't have a lot of data points on that one, though.

[Straka]

2008 has been my most active year. Completed 2 manuscripts (one of which is trunked), the other is a WIP and the running total is 300K. I should finish the WIP in another month, then hopefully finish another before the new year while editing one of the completed manuscripts.

As far as development goes though I'm trying to get the first drafts tighter the first time so there is less editing. My plots are good, the timing of conflicts and such is there, so what it really boils down were I'm spending most of my time editing the actual sentence structure and flow of paragraphs. Really the nitty gritty stuff. Right words in the right places.

[ladylynxx]

I just wanna say that I love this site!

Okay, it takes me about four months from start to finish. I wrote one last year, but my second one is taking a little longer. Both manuscripts are around or over the 100k words mark. Editing takes about a month, but then again I also edit as I write. On a good day I can do over 3,000 words and on a bad day none at all. Sometimes, I will have a block for weeks and then suddenly bang out 4 chapters in a week. It all depends!

I'm not published by a house yet, but I have self-published and got some good reviews from my readers.

[SarahMacManus]

Last one took four months to first draft, this current one is taking forever...

[Quossum]

Several months, usually.

It's the typing, editing, revising, beta-ing, angsting over changes, setting the piece aside for a while to look at it later with fresh eyes, then starting up again with the revisions that take all the time.

--Q

[raburrell]

10 months for the first draft at 180k. 2 more months to wrestle it back down to manageable size. I figure that means the next one should take me 8 months. ;)

As someone with a FT job and a two year old, 1000 wds/night is about my limit.

[Straka]

The first one took me 3 years @ 178K

The second 2 years at 325K

The third 1 year at 108K

The fourth 1 year at 114K

The fifth and sixth were a month at 100K.

That's all first draft figures. Basically I've gotten into the mode of writing more and tighter the first time around.

[ccv707]

My first was about three months
Second at roughly a year
Third just under two years
Fourth at fifteen months
Fifth at nine months

I usually try to do 5-10 pages a day, sometimes go into a marathon and work twelve hours straight (which can result in up to forty pages if I'm in a groove). The word counts are in my sig.

[Mr. Anonymous]

When schools in and I don't have too much time on my hands I write 1000 words here and there.

When I'm on break I typically write 60ish k in the span of 2-3 weeks, which I'm fairly happy with.

EDIT: ccv707 - What a behemoth you've got there!

[ccv707]

Indeed. Still have two more books in that series of behemoths to write. Starting a non-related project around Christmas time. Probably take about six months to get through that one.

[K. Taylor]

The one I finished this year? 2 years. And I hadn't realized it had taken that long until I looked at the start date on the original file.

I've written plenty of stories that didn't take nearly that long, just weeks or months, but this one sat for quite a while at 8 chapters. Life wasn't going well and the muse flat-out deserted me. I just couldn't write a happy ending romance when things were sucking all around me. ;)

My best muse moment was writing 9 chapters in 24 hours once. Kinda burned out from that for a couple weeks, LOL, but I'm still proud of it. I'm not that fast of a typist, either.

[knight_tour]

I've never experianced writers block.

That's interesting; I also have never experienced writers block, and while I do believe it exists, I really can't imagine experiencing it myself since the writing comes so naturally.

I just finished my first draft of my first novel yesterday. I expect the next one to go much easier. This first story evolved in my head for more than twenty years before I ever typed the first word. Once I did start, I did one chapter, sat on it for a few months, and then added two more. I didn't write again for half a year. Things went in jerks and stops, until I began to see a distant 'light at the end of the tunnel', whereupon it took off and I did more than 50,000 words in two months, and finished up this weekend with around 30,000 words in 2.5 days. I'm exhausted, but thrilled.

[Straka]

While my latest draft took me a month to write, its taken me a year of editing and rewriting it on and off between working on other projects.

I like this current model of writing, it allows me time to become somewhat detached from the work to better see inconsistencies and generally poor writing.

[scarletpeaches]

Oh wow, some of you guys are so lucky. What with working and maintaining some sort of social life I'm lucky to grab time for 1,000 words/day. I started my first novel on the 1st March and don't expect to get the first draft done until the end of August. Six months!! Things will probably be even worse next year when I go back to Uni, but I'll still fight to get my 1,000 words/day in.

Luck has nothing to do with it. It's called self-discipline. You're no more busy than anyone else with a full-time job outside the home and a social life to maintain.

There are twenty-four hours in everyone's day.

[motormind]

It always takes me way longer than necessary, since I'm a lazy bitch. I mean, it's not that I am writing literary masterpieces.

[ladylynxx]

While my latest draft took me a month to write, its taken me a year of editing and rewriting it on and off between working on other projects.

I like this current model of writing, it allows me time to become somewhat detached from the work to better see inconsistencies and generally poor writing.

I also write on other project inbetween, it actually stops me from getting stuck in a rut with a novel. I can com back to it with fresh eyes almost every time...

[ccv707]

Luck has nothing to do with it. It's called self-discipline. You're no more busy than anyone else with a full-time job outside the home and a social life to maintain.

There are twenty-four hours in everyone's day.

Indeed.

[Straka]

I also write on other project inbetween, it actually stops me from getting stuck in a rut with a novel. I can com back to it with fresh eyes almost every time...

It's very helpful for me. When I finish a WIP I feel this is great! I take a look at it a month later after reading more books, working on other projects and think, dear lord this is terrible! Then I go about fixing it until I think it's good again. Put it away... a few months later... AK! And I thought this was publishable!?

And so on and so forth.

[C.M.C.]

Mine took a shade under three months, but I gave myself days off every week, so it could have been faster.

[ChaosTitan]

Lately I've been averaging 8-12 weeks for a first draft.

[Prawn]

At a thousand words a day, I need about three months for a first draft. Editing it takes about forever, give or take.

[Rushie]

It took me half a century to get as far as typing "Chapter 1" for my first novel. After a couple months of wheel spinning I've hit "laser focus" mode. Don't expect to see me on the board; I'm too busy working on the novel. If laser focus mode continues, I'll be ready to submit in 5 months.

[wannawrite]

2000 words a day, religiously. After that, its gravy. I wrote 10,000 the other day, was in a writing coma, sort of. Couldn't stop. Figured when I went to sleep that night that I'd wake up the next day and proof myself and it would all be junk. It was actually pretty good. So. 2000 words, then go w/the flow.

[Ctairo]

I shoot for 1,000 words a day/5 days a week, so a novel that doesn't require research takes about 3 months. I give myself permission to "spew" (get words on the page) and fix the trouble spots (language, plot holes, pacing, tone/character inconsistencies) later.

[Idkwiaowiw]

Wow, I feel so embarrased compared to everyone else. I try to write ten pages a day. I know most writers would say the word count, but, for my books, different pages have a different amount of words on them.

[Ken Schneider]

Depends on the wordcount.

I like to try to finsih a normal WC novel in four months.

[Enzo]

A first draft should take two months, but that's only when writing at a steady pace, with no distractions and no writer's block.
Then of course, there are the rewrites, new ideas, etc. If you include all that, it probably takes me about a year to finish one novel.
Last year, I thought NaNoWriMo would help me in moving ahead faster, but actually there was a backlash afterward that stopped me from writing on my WIP for quite some time. I now found a certain pace that is keeping me moving slower, but steadier.

[xXFireSpiritXx]

I usually punch out a first draft between 5-8 weeks. I am fast writer though. Sometimes I can do 25 pages in 3 hours. Am I freak? Yes, I guess so.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

I once said it took me 17 years to finish my first book.

Thinking back on it, though, I realize it didn't take nearly that long. Maybe more like two years.

Judging by other manuscripts I've done, I could probably finish one in little less than a year (first draft through to final copy). I'm going to try that with my present project, actually.

[Zipotes]

About 2 months give or take, depending on how much time I have and how engrossed I am in the idea.

[seun]

My first drafts average about 4 months. Then I leave it for at least a month before starting the edits. The final version usually takes me another 5 months.

[Silent Rob]

Well, I spent about a year and half on my first one and it's still not finished. It's complete rubbish though so I've left it for now. I didn't have any kind of plan and I also didn't use any dialogue at all, which made it really hard to move things along or generate any kind of interest (even from me). Don't ask. :(

Anyway, had a much better idea and decided to go with that. Planned it all out nice and proper and started it about four weeks ago. I'm just about to put chapter 6 to bed (they're all ~5k wordcount). I'm aiming for 19 in all.

My second attempt is definitely working out a lot better. That's the kind of timetable I'd like to keep to in the future.

Silent

[SarahMacManus]

65K takes me about 3-4 months for a first draft, but I also have a full time job. I second guess myself a lot, and some days I just go completely blank. I guess I average about 1200 words per day on weeknights and can do 10,000 on a good weekend.

I had one very bad night recently where it took me four hours to put down about 400 words and it was all complete dreck.

It also depends on how strongly I feel about what I'm writing and the genre. If I'm still not convinced of my premise or plot, I write slower. I can pump literary/mainstream fiction out pretty rapidly, fantasy and magic realism comes a lot harder.

[Kenzie]

God, all you people make me feel incredibly inferior. I'm very aware that one reason my career isn't in better shape is because I can't write quickly. I never have been able to; all the tricks that people advise (word count logs, rewards) just slow me down. As do deadlines. Sometimes I'm OK with that, but most of the time I have to struggle with the ugly little voice that whispers, "If you were a real writer, you could write a book a year."

I guess you can only do what you can do.

- Victoria

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I started my current WIP during the Nanowrimo of 2007. My word count is only just over 17,000 words, and I wrote 7000 of them during Nano. I would use the excuse that I was travelling most of that time, and have only been home, in a settled lifestyle, for just over a month. But I have only added about 1000 words in that month. So yeah, count me in the extraordinarily slow writers camp. I have struggled a lot with figuring out the details of the plot which slows me down a lot, and I have just had a bit of a breakthrough in that department, so we'll see if things improve. I desperately want to at least finish the first draft by the end of this year, because this is getting ridiculous and I don't feel I have the right to call myself a 'writer' at all, at least beyond my usual day job as a magazine editor and writer sense.

[Skye Jules]

Depending on the word count, I'd say three months (that's like 90,000 words though). If I'm doing ten pages a day, which is about 3,000 words, then it could take just a month. But since I'll be starting college come August, it's most likely going to take me two to three months.

[huu]

I can sit at my computer for an hour, and only pump out five hundred words.

To me this is extremely frustrating, because a lot of the times I can see and I KNOW what I want to say. But when it comes to putting my thoughts down it's like the gears in my mind get stuck.

Anyone have any ideas to get you writing? Or should I just accept I'm a molasses writer? I've tried Write or Die, which kind of helped...at the same time though, I know I can prolong the evil side effects by clicking the space bar.

[HistorySleuth]

Maybe you need one of those voice gadgets, you know the ones you speak into and it types it on the screen? Just an idea if you know what you want to say and the typing slows your thought process down.

[AlexPiper]

This month, I've been participating in a Word Race with some friends, which has really motivated me to keep writing. (Though, after holding the lead for most of the month, I just lost it yesterday. Nooooo!)

If I'm only writing for myself, it's easy to sit down and sort of dither and not get a lot done. I think about the scene, I try to put down a sentence, I pause, I reconsider, I try to get the words down a different way, I agonize over the phrasing, etc.

But if I'm writing and my word count moves Barbaro further down my lane on the racetrack... well, if my horse is waaaaay behind everyone else's, I feel silly. So the race ensures I at least put in the effort every night, and that makes me much less inclined to sit and endlessly work on the same sentence. Instead, I just... move on to the next sentence, and the next, and the one after that.

Now, something like this may not be for everyone. But as for me? I wrote about 4000 words in January, total. In comparison, I've written around 20,000 /just in the past 17 days/.

[s.m.s]

Are you only willing to write down stuff that looks or sounds perfect? Since you know what you want to say but "can't" write it down, that may be your problem. Don't be afraid to write crappy sentences!

Just the other day I made a blog post about skipping a minor scene of my story and putting "they find the damn thing" as a place holder. Then I moved on to other material that I did have ideas for rather than let myself slave over coming up with something for that scene.

[Nightmirror]

It may just be that you write at a slower pace, but more consistently. I can crank out 15 pages on a good day, but then I don't look at it again for another week. Then, of course, I have to edit all the words I spat out on the page.

[Susan Littlefield]

There is nothing wrong with writing slow. It just depends on what works for you.

[cptwentworth]

Do you happen to write and re-read, write and re-read? I know I'll do that sometimes, and I realize I hardly have anything down because I spend so much time looking back. Press forward! Or maybe those 500 words had so much forethought that everything you're writing is awesome! I don't think writing is a speed contest, though.

[izanobu]

It depends on what you want. If you'd just like to get more done, then make more time to write. If it takes you an hour to write 500 words (which mind you, if you do every day is enough words to write two novels a year or so), then write for two hours and double your output. Being slow isn't a problem if it is letting you achieve your goals. (Also, 500 words in an hour? Not really that slow) If you want to be more productive, look at your priorities and your schedule and find some extra time. That's probably the easiest way to increase your output.

[blacbird]

I'll make a comment here when I get around to it.

[Atlantis]

I can sit at my computer for an hour, and only pump out five hundred words.

To me this is extremely frustrating, because a lot of the times I can see and I KNOW what I want to say. But when it comes to putting my thoughts down it's like the gears in my mind get stuck.

Anyone have any ideas to get you writing? Or should I just accept I'm a molasses writer? I've tried Write or Die, which kind of helped...at the same time though, I know I can prolong the evil side effects by clicking the space bar.

Got you beat. I average between 150 and 200 words a day. On a good day I can get over 500 words. I average about 1,000 words or a page or two a week. I'm happy with this pace. As long as I write SOMETHING each day I am content with that. On a very rare day I can sometimes write a whole page in a few hours.

I don't know why I write so slow. I've tried to push myself to do more but its like trying to get blood out of a brick. I would love for the words to gush out of me but they don't. They drip. A word at a time. But that's okay with me. I am almost 29,000 thousand words into my novella at the moment. I'm getting close to the end one paragraph at a time.

When I read that people on here can write thousands of words in a day or a novel in three week it freaks me out and makes me feel depressed. I think to myself 'How do they do it? I wish I could write that much!' but it doesn't really matter. I am acheiving my goals slowly. My pace has been slowly getting faster.

I think one of the keys to writing more is enjoyment. If you find the process of writing fun, the words should flow faster. In 2009 I went weeks without working on my novella because I was not having fun writing it. The story was dark and I was plagued with worries about its marketability.

It's the total opposite with my current story. I'm loving it. I've noticed that it's had an effect on my pace. Since I'm having fun I am able to write more easily.

Do not get too frustrated about your writing speed. Focus on having fun and in time you will slowly get faster.

[Nightmirror]

Writing fast is a luxury. Writing well is a necessity. If someone can write a novel in a week, then good for them. I wouldn't worry so much about your speed: if your work is awesome than who cares what your pace is, right?

[Jamesaritchie]

Since when is five hundred words per hour slow? At two hours per day, that's a 100,000 word novel in just over three months. Most would consider this pretty darned good.

I do think there's a point where slow is synonymous with lazy, but five hundred words per hour ain't it.

[Nick Blaze]

My writing habits are very sporadic. Some days I'm lucky and happy to pull off 500 words. Other days I write 10,000. But considering 500 per day is a lot worse than 500 per hour, that can be considered really slow. But so long as I'm writing something.

[Amarie]

I'm a very slow writer too, but when I'm trying to meet a deadline, whether it's self-imposed or an outside one, I make myself write a 1000 words a day by vowing not to do anything else until the words are done. It works for me. Everyone has a different pace.

[jaksen]

Speed is immaterial. The trick is to write something good.

[izanobu]

Speed is immaterial. The trick is to write something good.

Speed is actually somewhat material, depending on your career goals. If you want to make a living selling your writing, you can't spend a year crafting a perfect sentence. No matter how good you are, if you don't do the work in a reasonable amount of time (which varies, of course), you won't make a living.

If you want to just craft the perfect sentence, well, sure. Be as slow as you like. However, writing more often equals writing better because practice is what really matters. :)

[Laineywrites]

I don't consider myself to be a slow writer, but I am addicted to editing and it will consume me at times. Just recently I worked on one paragraph for 4 hours before I finally caught (and literally kicked) myself. The amount of time I have available to write each day is limited and I can't waste it with craziness.

I find that what I call the "edit bug in my mental programming" will slow me down. I agree with the comment that to earn a living you have to finish something in a reasonable amount of time. If you're finishing in what you consider a reasonable amount of time, then go with your own flow. Just don't let the edit bug get ya.

[wrtaway]

I'm an excruciatingly slow writer, but you know what? My first draft ends up being pretty darn close to my final draft, because I've been editing non-stop the whole way. I have a friend who churns out words by the tens of thousands every time she sits down at the computer, but she ends up cutting half of those words during edits. It works for her, but that would feel horribly inefficient for me! (And I know that my way would feel awful to her, as well.)

[Phaeal]

I can sit at my computer for an hour, and only pump out five hundred words.

To me this is extremely frustrating, because a lot of the times I can see and I KNOW what I want to say. But when it comes to putting my thoughts down it's like the gears in my mind get stuck.

Anyone have any ideas to get you writing? Or should I just accept I'm a molasses writer? I've tried Write or Die, which kind of helped...at the same time though, I know I can prolong the evil side effects by clicking the space bar.

500 words an hour is not slow. A little over three hours a day, and you'd be going at NaNoWriMo pace (1667 words a day.)

[maestrowork]

There is nothing wrong with being slow. It's not a race. Do what works for you. If you're not happy, then think if ways to improve. But NEVER compare yourself to writers who churn out 3000 or 5000 words a day. Everyone is different. There is no right or wrong.

I am a slow writer myself. But I'm no less satisfied or proud of my work. I like my work. I love what I do, and I have time for a normal life too. I am not going to stress about not turning out 2000 words a day, every day. In fact I'm glad I don't, since I know I'd have burned out long ago.

[maestrowork]

My writing habits are very sporadic. Some days I'm lucky and happy to pull off 500 words. Other days I write 10,000. But considering 500 per day is a lot worse than 500 per hour, that can be considered really slow. But so long as I'm writing something.

500 words a day may seem slow, but that's still 185000 words a year. At least two novels a year. Not too shabby. Must we write 10 novels a year to call ourselves writers? As long as you keep writing, that's what counts.

[badducky]

I've done quite well for myself at about 500 words, or so, an hour. What would be considered fast? Such a pace, to me, is luxurious.

It doesn't matter how fast you wrote it when you have to rewrite everything a dozen times.

Recommendation learned from Cat Valente, a fast writer: After you write a while, during your day, read it aloud immediately, with pen in hand, ready to fix weird quirks immediately.

[LJD]

I wrote about 700 words (estimate, I write longhand) this morning in 75 minutes and thought I was going fast. 500 words/hour is a reasonably good pace. Sometimes I write much faster, but not usually.

But it really depends on how you work. Some people write very polished first drafts, and don't mind spending that extra time on the first draft to make it good.

[Anne Lyle]

500 words an hour isn't slow, unless you have so little time to write that it only equates to a small amount each week!

When I did NaNoWriMo I faithfully kept track of my pace and found that even writing at what is for me hell-for-leather, I usually only managed 700-800 words an hour. That's still enough to "win" NaNoWriMo whilst writing only 2-and-a-bit hours a day!

To me "slow" means "takes more than a year to write a single draft of a novel" :)

[maestrowork]

To me "slow" means "takes more than a year to write a single draft of a novel" :)

And there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm a little baffled with a general sense that writers must write fast, or have a certain throughput. Slap a number on it. There seems to be a pervasive idea that if you don't write 500, 1000 or 2000 words a day, you're a failure, that you shouldn't even bother, or that you're a lesser writer than the guy next to you. I find that kind of thinking, or equating quantity with quality, troubling. The truth is, some people write fast and churn out books after books. And some people takes 2, 10 or 20 years to write one. It doesn't mean anything to me. What matters to me is the final product. Harper Lee published only ONE book in her life, and there's no way I don't consider her a great writer. James Patterson writes 10 books a year, and I'm not very impressed.

Do what works FOR YOU.

[Layla Nahar]

Currently the max I can do in one day is the high 300s. It takes me about 2 hours. I want to double that, but I'd be really happy to do 500 words in a day. And I'm not talking about losing time by going back & trying to make it perfect. Just getting the ideas out. Coming up with the ideas. That's really hard. I'll fix the language on revision. As I'm getting to the end of my current story I have been failing to make my 300 word min.

I would really like to write more* in a day, because I want to be a professional writer. I would really really appreciate anybody's suggestions to write more, and to write 'longer' - I seem to write short and I'm at a loss as to how to fix this.

*greater volume of quality narrative that advances my story

[maestrowork]

I would really like to write more in a day, because I want to be a professional writer.

I think the right word is "better," not "more."

However, I am not knocking the daily word count. After all, we have nothing to edit if we don't put words on the page, and if we only write 100 words a day, we're not really that effective as writers. Writers write. The idea, though, is to keep writing. Write every day, whether it's 100 words or 10,000. That's the only way we can practice and improve and learn. The goal here is to become a "better" writer every day. The writer we are today should be better than the writer we were a year ago, whether we wrote 1000 words or 1000000.

The realistic point of view, of course, is that we need to have a draft before we can edit, submit and publish. And in order to do that, we need to finish what we started. If it takes 10 years, it doesn't make us bad writers.. just very rare writers. Some writers are successful being "rare." Some writers are very good at being prolific. Again, do what works for you. If you want to write a lot of books and make tons of money selling those books, then there's no other way than to write fast -- you can't afford to sit on your laurels for 5 years waiting for one book to finish. On the other hand, if I sold one book for $8 million, I don't think I'd have the burning urge to write fast -- I'll most likely take my time. :)

[GCU_Dramatic Exit]

And there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm a little baffled with a general sense that writers must write fast, or have a certain throughput. Slap a number on it. There seems to be a pervasive idea that if you don't write 500, 1000 or 2000 words a day, you're a failure, that you shouldn't even bother, or that you're a lesser writer than the guy next to you. I find that kind of thinking, or equating quantity with quality, troubling. The truth is, some people write fast and churn out books after books. And some people takes 2, 10 or 20 years to write one. It doesn't mean anything to me. What matters to me is the final product. Harper Lee published only ONE book in her life, and there's no way I don't consider her a great writer. James Patterson writes 10 books a year, and I'm not very impressed.

Do what works FOR YOU.

Exactly. I suppose it's somewhat symptomatic of society; we deem someone to be a success according to, say, how much money they have. In a way, word count is just another extension to the idea that more = better.

[CheG]

I will see your slow writing and up you writting long hand.

I write slowly too. But I always feel better as long as I DO something. Even if I only a paragragh as long as progress is being made.

What's important is to finish something.

[Phaeal]

I think the obsession with speed is the child of the perceived need to write three-five (or more) novels a year. Works for some people, but I think this perceived need also creates a lot of thin books, and I'm talking quality, not word count.

Good soup takes simmering. Which is not to say omelettes are bad, but they're not soup.

[PrincessofPersia]

I have been putting out about 2,200 words a day for the last several weeks. But, it takes me hours to do that. I probably only write about 500 words an hour. I'm doing most of my planning and plotting as I go, so it's slowing me down. I'm also taking more time to make sure the writing is interesting, and the characters have their own voices. So, I'm writing slower, but I'm writing better.

[Layla Nahar]

I think the right word is "better," not "more."

However, I am not knocking the daily word count. After all, we have nothing to edit if we don't put words on the page, and if we only write 100 words a day, we're not really that effective as writers. Writers write. The idea, though, is to keep writing. Write every day, whether it's 100 words or 10,000. That's the only way we can practice and improve and learn. The goal here is to become a "better" writer every day. The writer we are today should be better than the writer we were a year ago, whether we wrote 1000 words or 1000000.

The realistic point of view, of course, is that we need to have a draft before we can edit, submit and publish. And in order to do that, we need to finish what we started. If it takes 10 years, it doesn't make us bad writers.. just very rare writers. Some writers are successful being "rare." Some writers are very good at being prolific. Again, do what works for you. If you want to write a lot of books and make tons of money selling those books, then there's no other way than to write fast -- you can't afford to sit on your laurels for 5 years waiting for one book to finish. On the other hand, if I sold one book for $8 million, I don't think I'd have the burning urge to write fast -- I'll most likely take my time. :)

aah - Maestro - this was a frustrating answer. ^.^

If I want to write and edit and submit one novel in about a year, I need to write faster. That means writing more, right? I produce clear, grammtical and logical prose. I can fix flaws on the revision. (There's no hope for me going for the 10 year amazing story. I just plain lack that level of talent. The best I can hope for is an entertaining yarn.) Although I do appreciate the reminder to keep the goal of being a better writer today than I was yesterday.

[Layla Nahar]

In a way, word count is just another extension to the idea that more = better.


Would you accept word count as a valid a way to make "ass-in-chair" meaningful? And a way to complete projects?

[AlexPiper]

I don't consider myself to be a slow writer, but I am addicted to editing and it will consume me at times. Just recently I worked on one paragraph for 4 hours before I finally caught (and literally kicked) myself. The amount of time I have available to write each day is limited and I can't waste it with craziness.

For what it's worth, to conquer this problem I forced myself to write my stories by hand for a couple of years. Just going back and tweaking a sentence over and over is trivial on a computer, but if you're writing in ink with a fountain pen in a notebook it becomes a lot easier to resist the siren call of constant re-editing. And after a couple years of writing longhand in notebooks, it becomes much more ingrained to just keep writing.

(The one I have to conquer now is the desire to plan out each paragraph ahead of time, sitting there pondering how best to make the words flow before even writing. Hence the word race mentioned above... which has been great at just making me write /something/ every day, even if it's only been a couple hundred words some days, instead of sitting and staring at the page for my entire allotted writing time.)

[vrabinec]

Hip, hip, hooray for the slow writers!

I started serious work on my WIP in November of 2007, and I've typed about 220,000 words on it since that time, discarded or will discard as soon as the next revision starts to the tune of about 140,000, leaving 80,000 usable words of a novel I expect to be around 110,000 by the time I'm done. That's about 23,000 usable words a year in 10 - 15 minute slices of typing in the morning and evening and 2-3 hours on weekends, or roughly 30 usable words an hour.

[maestrowork]

Really, if anyone asks, I'd just say I started writing the book last month. They wouldn't know. They wouldn't care. They just need to know if the book is any good.

[WCP]

i am the slowest writer ever. and when i start to edit, i get so bored i fall asleep after reading two sentences

[Brutal Mustang]

Works for some people, but I think this perceived need also creates a lot of thin books, and I'm talking quality, not word count.

Agreed. Quite frankly, I think few people on this globe are smart enough to write a good book fast. To write a good book, one needs time to mull things over. Replace cool ideas with even better ones. Think and dream about the characters. Come up with incredible twists. All that good stuff.

[kaitie]

I'm pretty slow, too. Most of the time, I can work for a few hours and come out with five hundred words. Of course, some days I can throw out two thousand. I think it would be nice if I could do that sort of thing daily, but I don't let it get me down too much, either. I know that beginnings move slow for me and ends move fast, and that's just how it is.

I think a lot of people struggle with getting it down on paper the way it is in our heads, though. I can't count the number of times I've worked out a fantastic little dialogue or description or whatever, and then when I go to write it down I can't quite get it right.

[Shuemais]

What about untying -- can we slow writers untie, too? ;)

When I was working on my last book, I made a promise to myself that I'd do at least a paragraph everyday. What is that -- 100 words? 150? 200 for the run-ons, maybe? I just finished my last edit and cut it down to five-large short of 90,000 words total, but my first draft was around 102-103k, and I managed that in less than 3 months, an average of 1200 words per day.

The magic doesn't come naturally to most people from what I've seen; the pipes sometimes stop up, get clogged or the drain seems sluggish. Just keep feeding the muse and sit yourself down for your daily dose of inspiration every day. If you can't manage a word count per day, do a paragraph or a page.

Good to hear that I'm not the only slow one out here. I can only dream of the day that I'm managing 2k words a day.

[Jake Barnes]

I can sit at my computer for an hour, and only pump out five hundred words.

To me this is extremely frustrating, because a lot of the times I can see and I KNOW what I want to say. But when it comes to putting my thoughts down it's like the gears in my mind get stuck.

Anyone have any ideas to get you writing? Or should I just accept I'm a molasses writer? I've tried Write or Die, which kind of helped...at the same time though, I know I can prolong the evil side effects by clicking the space bar.


Graham Greene's goal was to write 500 words a day. It worked for him.

[Nick Blaze]

My first novel took me almost exactly a year to write. It was a slow crawl for the most part, but some days I'd write 10,000 and almost 20,000, and others I'd be happy for 500.

Then for NaNoWriMo the year after (or the year after that?) I wrote the entire manuscript in the month. Was it quality? Eh... When I compare the two, the first one is of a higher quality. The second one is more acceptable to modern day audiences-it doesn't read like poetry, it's easy to understand (although I am happy that the plot itself is not linear and has some good plot twists).

I will NOT release a novel for querying or publication unless I am actually satisfied with it. If I don't think it's good, it'll stay on my computer harddrive for me to ruminate over until I make it something good. That's why the writing and editing of my first novel has taken over three years.

[AlexPiper]

Really, the question is what works for you.

Maybe what works for you is 200 words a day, or less. Or maybe 500 words a day, and you take a day a week off. Whatever suits your writing style. One person may keep going at a steady pace and produce 100 words a day that don't need much editing, while another might blow through 2,000 words in a day and clean it up on a second pass. If your method works for you, then more power to you!

If, however, you find your method doesn't help you finish? That's when you may need to change.

If you're staring at the screen endlessly and not producing /anything/, if you're being distracted by instant messages and e-mail and web forums (hi, Absolute Write!), maybe you need to write without Internet access. If you find yourself endlessly editing a scene while you write, and never continuing on, never moving further, maybe you need to try writing in ink in a notebook to break the habit. If you find yourself distracted by things at home when you try to write, maybe you need a home office or a favorite coffeeshop to write at. If you find yourself never getting to that butt-in-chair, just start writing place, maybe you need to think about scheduling a specific time to write each day. Etc.

If your only problem is that you feel you'd like to get from 'Once Upon A Time' to 'The End' faster, I'd not necessarily worry too much. If your problem is getting to 'The End' /at all/, then I'd say you have something to worry about. :)

[Nightmirror]

Writing well is better than writing more. It's good to push YOUR personal goals for word count, but let's just remember this isn't a race.

[Anne Lyle]

And there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm a little baffled with a general sense that writers must write fast, or have a certain throughput. Slap a number on it. There seems to be a pervasive idea that if you don't write 500, 1000 or 2000 words a day, you're a failure, that you shouldn't even bother, or that you're a lesser writer than the guy next to you. I find that kind of thinking, or equating quantity with quality, troubling. The truth is, some people write fast and churn out books after books. And some people takes 2, 10 or 20 years to write one. It doesn't mean anything to me. What matters to me is the final product. Harper Lee published only ONE book in her life, and there's no way I don't consider her a great writer. James Patterson writes 10 books a year, and I'm not very impressed.

Do what works FOR YOU.

It doesn't bother me how fast or slow other people write - that's entirely up to them. It bothers me how fast I write, because I'd like to have a career as an author.

However writing two books a year, say, doesn't mean that each book only took six months to write from start to finish. I have ideas and projects on the backburner all the time, so any given book could take two years or more from initial idea to finished manuscript - I like to write a first draft and then let in stew in my subconscious whilst I work on something else. My current project was drafted for NaNoWriMo 2007, and I intend to rewrite it from scratch during the course of this year.

AFAIK, James Patterson doesn't personally write 10 books a year - he regularly collaborates with writers who produce the first drafts for him. Which admittedly gives him even less excuse for crappy prose!

[Layla Nahar]

It bothers me how fast I write, because I'd like to have a career as an author.


Ditto!

I am gathering from some of the posts in this thread that for some people word count is an achievement in and of itself, rather than a tool to advance to completion the goal of finishing and selling books.

I am uninterested in what other people think of how long it took me to write something. What does that have to do with whether they want to keep turning the page and will pay $7.95+tax to take it home & read?

I'm the type of person who needs a very clearly defined goal in order to sit down and work. If I say "I'm going to write tonight" - I could easily fail do do more than a sentence. If I say "I can stop once I get to x-words", then I advance my story.

(sigh. I was really hoping someone would say "I did xyz and I ended up writing x-more words a day"...)

... this isn't a race.
What if you have a deadline?

[CheG]

I worry about not being fast enough in the event I get an agent/publisher. I'm not sure I could write two books a year. I think I could do one a year.

Maybe it's just a lack of confidence. That tends to be where I choke on getting the words out. The fear they aren't good enough. I dunno...

[Cella]

It took me 20 minutes just to post this...

[IDGS]

Just the other day I made a blog post about skipping a minor scene of my story and putting "they find the damn thing" as a place holder. Then I moved on to other material that I did have ideas for rather than let myself slave over coming up with something for that scene.

Ha! Actually laughed out loud at this one. I adore the love/hate relationship with a manuscript. I've filled an entire page before with profanities about how frustrated I was before, just for kicks - fortunately, I deleted it before the editors got to seeing it...

[scarletpeaches]

Writing well is better than writing more. It's good to push YOUR personal goals for word count, but let's just remember this isn't a race.Aaaaand once again I must say FALSE DICHOTOMY. THE TWO ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

Christ. Threads like this...plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.:rolleyes:

[shelleyo]

A writer can produce quality work whether he writes fast or slow. Slow writing doesn't guarantee good writing just as fast writing doesn't guarantee crap.

We are all different. It's entirely possible for someone to write 2000 words in an hour that's better than 250 words someone else struggles over all afternoon. And vice versa.

Shelley

[jaksen]

What has speed got to do with quality?

Not much.

Some of us write fast and well; others write slow and well.

Some 'writers' (though none in this thread, of course) suck at any speed.

[huu]

It doesn't bother me how fast or slow other people write - that's entirely up to them. It bothers me how fast I write, because I'd like to have a career as an author.


I think this basically hit the reason why I feel kind of nervous about my speed.

I wasn't trying to make it a black/white decision, nor do I think it is one.

But this thread has good responses. Thanks AW.

[Atlantis]

Just because a writer might have a slow writing speed does not mean that they will never make it as a professional writer. It is quality not speed that counts. George R.R Martin writes fantastic fantasy books and he takes years to finish a single novel. He is successful though. His books are being made into a television series.

Focus on writing a good story. Not being fast. I would rather spend over a year working on a single novella then churn out stuff that I wrote so quickly will probably end up needing to be rewritten because the quality of the writing is so poor.

I spent a year working on a novella and I sold it to a publisher. Being slow does not mean you cannot succeed at writing.

[Sindri]

Just like everyone else here, I also write slowly most of the time. And for a couple of reasons.

1. I can't stand poor sentences or bad flow (when typing), whether it's the first draft or not.

2. I don't always have a clear picture of the scene I'm writing, or of what people are saying, so it takes a bit of thinking and mulling about what happens and how key information should be revealed.

3. Writing so slowly can demotivate me because I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. (It's a vicious cycle.)


Here are a few things that may have helped me pick things up a bit (though I'm still slow):

1. Being forced to handwrite on my hour long commute to work (I would never handwrite at home). As someone else said, it's easier to ignore the urge to edit when it's so much more difficult to rearrange sentences and paragraphs. Also, I had nothing else to do on the train ride and no distractions. Of course, having this really rough first draft to refer to also helps when I get 'stuck' in front of the computer.

2. Doing more planning and outlining so I know exactly what I have to write before I sit down to do it.

3. Keeping track of exactly how many words I write, what time I started and what time I stopped. This helps to motivate me because I can see I am actually moving forward and getting somewhere with my word count.


I believe a lot of what I've written in this first draft is quality enough not to change in the next draft but, conversely, quite a bit of it will be removed or modified simply because of new plot development I've created as I've gone along.

I personally think that if I wrote fast and poorly, I would not be motivated to go back to rewrite the whole thing. Having written well the first time round - Wow, I can write something decent! - actually inspires me to keep working through it, to make it even better.

[maestrowork]

A writer can produce quality work whether he writes fast or slow. Slow writing doesn't guarantee good writing just as fast writing doesn't guarantee crap.

We are all different. It's entirely possible for someone to write 2000 words in an hour that's better than 250 words someone else struggles over all afternoon. And vice versa.

Shelley

Exactly. I'm tired of people who say writing fast = writing crap. I'm also tired of people saying writing slow = will never make it as a professional writer. Neither is necessarily true (it depends on the writer, obviously). The less we use hyperbole, the better we are as a group.

[izanobu]

George RR Martin is, in fact, not a slow writer. He's just very busy and not necessarily working on the Ice and Fire books all the time.
Here's a bibliography for him. He writes a ton of short stories, edits a lot of things, and used to write screen/teleplays. So his novel collection might be somewhat small for how long he's been in the business, but I doubt anyone would call him less than prolific looking at this: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/george-r-r-martin/

[lucidzfl]

I dont have as much time to write as I wish I did, but every time I sit down I write around 2K.

[jaksen]

I write at the speed which suits me best, fast, slow or in-between. It all depends. On a caffeine high? I am lightning-on-the-keyboard.

Late in the afternoon, feeling a bit logy or after a workout? I slooooooooow down.

The important thing is that I'm working on my fiction. I produce every day. New pages, new chapter, new dialogue. Or I edit, revise, read aloud.

Produce. Every day.

[AnnaSaikin]

Produce, produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesmal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name!

I can write a decent amount in an hour. My slowness comes from not carving out time to write everyday. I end up producing less than 2000 words a week because I get busy doing other things. I agree with jaksen: write. Every day.

[OpheliaRevived]

I can't imagine writing 10 books a year unless I had a live in Nanny/Maid/Concubine for my husband.

[nocomposer]

Slow here. My goal is 500 words a sitting (usually ~ 2 hours). I stay if it takes longer just to reach 500. I might even stop short if I reach my goal (assuming it's a good place to stop). 1000 word days (weekends) are rare but they happen. THAT'S a good feeling.

I'm better at a little bit everyday than a lot in fewer days.

[Alchemenos Prausti]

Keeping track of how many words I write each day is a thoroughly alien concept to me. Getting words down has never been an issue. That's because I don't have any expectation whatsoever of getting it right the first time. I know I'm going to change and/or at least reevaluate every word I write no less than 30 times before I consider it close to finalized. Thus, I measure my progress in how many pages I re-read/edit per day.

[Berenice]

Slow writer here to join the club. I usually write a lot in one sitting, about 2000 words, and a chapter takes about three days. But the thing is, I have to wait until a chapter is "ripe" in my head to lay it down on the page, so often I mull it over in my head for about it for a week before starting to write it.

Also, I go back to edit and revise a lot because I just don't want to wait until the novel is done to change what bugs me, so that takes some time. I don't mind being slow, though, it's not like I'm on a deadline with a publisher :tongue

[mccardey]

Me. Dead slow. Almost comatose. I sit at the desk for a very long time. I just don't often have many words when I get up.

And then one day it's written.

No idea how that happens....

[Dorothea May]

It can be hard to stay disciplined with kids, but I aim for 1500+ wpd when only writing and less when editing something else.
That said, I wrote three novels in 2010.

[Kate Thornton]

It can take me as little as a half hour to write a short story. But the novel? Well, it took Harley Jane Kozac 10 years to finish her first one - I'm a close second at 3 years.

I am one of those revise-it-on-the-fly-until-it's-perfect types. It slows me way down.


..

[kaitie]

I'm with Maestro on this one. I don't think writing slowly precludes a career as a writer. Might not make as much in the long run, but I don't think it's necessarily going to make it impossible to be published, either.

I'm perfectly happy if I can produce one book a year or one book every year and a half. If I can pull it off sooner, that's cool, but I'd rather take my time and be happy with what I'm producing and have a chance to edit and revise to my liking than I would rush through something. That's partly because the stress doesn't help, and partly because for me the quality of the work would go down. I've seen a few novelists increase their productivity lately, and I have yet to see any of it done to the betterment of the books. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying that fast isn't always better and you have to know yourself and what you're capable of.

I'd never sign a contract requiring me to write a new book in six months, and that's mostly just me knowing my limits. I also don't think I have to give up a career as a writer if I chose to say "Give me a year instead."

Might just be naivete on my part, but I really don't believe it's a bad thing to be slow.

[muravyets]

I would also like to make a living at writing, but not at the expense of the art of it. I know that being a professional anything is a JOB and when you have a job, ultimately, you just have to show up and do it. But I don't want my job to be putting words on paper. I want my job to be crafting stories that readers will love. If I can find a way to be prolific AND good, then yay me. But if producing good books means low output -- as long as I can be proud of what I produce, I'm not going to rail against the fates that it takes me longer to do it than it takes some other people. I'll just have to figure out a way to make slowness pay.

Re some other points: I've also been really unproductive due to bad habits -- procrastination plus an overactive inner editor.

Procrastination is a daily struggle (that I often put off ;)), but getting older -- Ack! Time really does fly! What's that rectangular hole in the ground I see rushing towards me? -- seems to be helping.

Switching to rough drafting in longhand seems to be helping with the self-editing problem, as others have said as well. I only just recently did it, but so far, my output per day is up. I find it not only cuts down on obsessive editing loops, but it also seems to calm my brain and keep me focused. And the cramp in my thumb is a built-in break timer. :)

[Phaeal]

I'm with Maestro on this one. I don't think writing slowly precludes a career as a writer. Might not make as much in the long run, but I don't think it's necessarily going to make it impossible to be published, either.

I'm perfectly happy if I can produce one book a year or one book every year and a half. If I can pull it off sooner, that's cool, but I'd rather take my time and be happy with what I'm producing and have a chance to edit and revise to my liking than I would rush through something. That's partly because the stress doesn't help, and partly because for me the quality of the work would go down. I've seen a few novelists increase their productivity lately, and I have yet to see any of it done to the betterment of the books. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying that fast isn't always better and you have to know yourself and what you're capable of.

I'd never sign a contract requiring me to write a new book in six months, and that's mostly just me knowing my limits. I also don't think I have to give up a career as a writer if I chose to say "Give me a year instead."

Might just be naivete on my part, but I really don't believe it's a bad thing to be slow.

Yups to all.

[Ann_Mayburn]

I write the first draft fast. It's the revisions before submitting that take me the most time. I get very critical and anal, including such things as doing a find and replace for twenty-eight words that I have written down on my 'tend to over use boring as shit cliche crap phrases' list. ;)

[Dave Veri]

Actually, the first one took 15 years, with much time taken up by writing songs. The fourth one took 6 months (with no time spent on the guitar). I am a faster writer as I gain confidence, but I have no real intent to do it faster. It's about the quality, first. I'm a month into a new novel (7,000 words) and it's going real slow just now. That's fine for me as long as I make some progress every day. [Sometimes the progress takes place without a notebook or laptop.] Sometimes it's research into a back-story that never comes to light except between the lines; sometimes it's staring out the window at the 12th billion snowflake to come by this year. Maybe that's why my setting is in the Caribbean, eh? My themes are racism and inter-generational hatred (and fishing and suntanning, too) so getting a grip on the subject and internalizing it within each character takes time. Whenever a subject is less autobiographical, it takes more time. Maybe I'll do a woman main character next . . . if I have the time.

[Aylaa]

I skimmed through a few pages of replies, but did anyone say, "as long as it takes"?

[Radhika]

I don't work that way.
I usually get to a point in the book where I have to rewrite it, and I just work from there. It's like -
10% of first draft - REWRITE
Writing like a first draft from the rewrite - REWRITE
Writing like a first draft from the latest rewrite - REWRITE!
I think I'd get overwhelmed if I did the entire first draft and then having being forced to rewrite it all.

[CAgirlforever]

I average about three months to finish the first draft of a novel, then another month or so for editing. I find that once I have the words written down and know exactly where the story is supposed to go, the editing is fairly easy, although it can be painful to see my carefully written words deleted from the computer screen.

http://willowwriter.blogspot.com

[skylarburris]

First draft - 3-6 months. Revision / Rewriting 1 -2 years.

[drakend]

I 'v written one novella (21,000 words) and just completed my last one ecently 37,000 and that was done in 4 weeks.