Do you write slower at the beginning?

katci13 said:

A short story for me can be slow all the way through or quick all the through. Novels for me always, ALWAYS start out slow and end fast.

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I've noticed the same in my writing. I also feel that with novels, it takes me a little time to truly fall in love with the work. At the beginning, there's a bit of insecurity combined with "I MUST get this idea down on paper...but how?" I'm not saying it gets easier, but I do find a better, more consistent routine once I get into the swing of things.

Jamesaritchie said:

A slow, sagging middle means I did something seriously wrong at the beginning. A fast, easy to write middle means I did everything right with the opening.

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Yes. This. If the middle is sagging, the issue is less with the middle than how you got there.

Layla Nahar said:

It's been very interesting to read all the perspectives & approaches. I'd put myself in the 'slow at the beginning' tendency for novels, and for shorts pretty consistent. But I'm mostly a slow writer. I'm getting a bit better at accepting that...

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You're not the only one. I'm a slow writer, too. Even my "fast" is slow compared to a lot of writers.

Almost always. I'll start off with word counts between 1-3k a day, and near the end, I'm writing around 4-7k a day. The excitement of the climax, knowing exactly where I'm going and what I'm doing, paired with the "almost there!" feeling, speeds things up SO much.

Layla Nahar said:

It's been very interesting to read all the perspectives & approaches. I'd put myself in the 'slow at the beginning' tendency for novels, and for shorts pretty consistent. But I'm mostly a slow writer. I'm getting a bit better at accepting that...

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Yeah, it's all relative. I'm a slow writer, too, and what I consider to be fast would still be incredibly slow to some people.

I don't have outlines so the beginning are usually easier than say the middle. At the beginning I'm creating the world, molding my characters personalities and such. In the middle the world is set up, my characters have their own views and mannerisms and I have limits to what I can do. In the beginning I don't need explanations for what they're doing, in the middle I have to really think would Joe really do that, Karent wouldn't miss a big hint like that so its a little harder.

I'm as fast at the beginning as I am in the middle and in the end. Probably that's why in 25 days time, I did 150,000 in my first draft of my current WIP, 6,000 words a day. My previous first draft of a previous work? Same. 120,000 words in 15 days. My 2nd WIP, 16,000 words in 3 days. I usually write the plot in a different document and that's how I write the entire story, by the plot alone. I once wrote an entire 250,000 word novel (trunked, definitely) based on one scene that I daydreamed about. I wrote that work in 2010 and last night I found it in a red CD-R. It was nice to revisit that. I was like Whoa there horsey. Of course it depends on how much your characters nag you to write what they're gonna do. When you have your characters constantly nagging at you, you have to write it, and mine nag all day and all night long, so you literally have me sitting in front of this netbook from my waking hour till my going to bed hour, excluding the short breaks I take to listen to music, eat my meals and shower. I rarely watch any TV. There has to be something on that I love, like Days of Our Lives General Hospital Pretty Bad Girls or Deadly Women or just a random Adam-Lambert appearance on TV.

The idea for a new novel will always appear while working on my current WIP. I'll write the first 5-10k words of the new novel within two or three days. Lock it away.

Finish writing, editing and publishing my work in progress and then go back to the new one...This could take six months or more but the foundations for the novel are there in those 5-10k words.

The best and worst thing about this is I have several of these 5-10k beginings of novels knocking around.

So yes, for me, the begining is always the fastest. The burst of inspiration.

Wow. I think at my best I only hit 3000-3500 words/day. More typical would be around 2000. And I have the luxury of writing full time. As for pace of creation, like many of you I come out of the gate pretty strong and settle into a jog around the third draft. This is usually because I'm getting sick of rereading what I just spent a couple of months writing. I get over that in the later drafts and feel that spark again when I begin trimming in the fourth incarnation. However, after two or three outlines and five drafts I am usually ready to put it away for a while 'cause I'm sick of looking at it. Takes a few weeks to go back and start polishing. Does anyone else experience the process like this?

I write fastest in the beginning, slow down considerably in the middle, and then pick up speed again at the end. When I'm "into" a novel in the beginning, I typically write about 4,000 words a day. I will often, in this period, leap right over the middle and write the last one or two chapters as well, in a rough way. Then I will often go days without expanding the story at all and just do a bunch of re-reading, editing, and rewriting of previously written material. This editing process typically gives me new ideas for the middle and eventually spurs me to connect the beginning and the end and finish the thing off. Once I get over the slump to finish it off, I typically write around 3,000 words a day. Because the slump is often long, it can take me 6 months to finish a novel, even though I've written over half of it in the first ten days. Then, when it's finished, there's often another 3-6 months of rewrites.

Fast.

I write fast (new words/chapters) in the afternoon, then I review and tweak those chapters the next morning after I've "slept on it" and thought about it.

Cameron

I never use outlines, so I always write slower in the beginning. As I grow accustomed to my characters and I know what's going on / where my story is really going, I'm a machine.

I would probably have the opposite problem if I outlined my story to death. It would be easy to start, but hard to write all that stuff in the middle between key events. I love going with the flow, because it's really exciting to see where the story goes (which sometimes backfires when it goes nowhere).

Sorry, about to be annoyingly pedantic...

eyebee14 said:

the story takes the reigns.​

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I tend to write the same speed all throughout my novel.

I'm a great starter. Middles are long and trying. Endings, well, they're hard to get to because of the damn middles. BUT-I always go back and write the first chapter about twenty more times.