The Longest It's Ever Taken You to Write a Novel

I've just finished a book I started five years ago, in 2009. I'm turning 50 in April, and sometimes I think about how few books I'll write in my life if each one takes five years....but that way lies despair and Pinot Noir.

Plus, I honestly think this book took five years because I was learning how to write a novel. There was a lot of running in place that went on. I think there's a reasonable chance I can finish the next one in two to three. That makes the math better.

For a full-length novel, six months was the longest, but there was a good deal of downtime on that novel, periods when I had to set it aside to finish other projects. Shortest was three weeks.

When someone tells me it took them many years to write a novel, I always wonder how much actual writing time was put into it. I don't understand it taking that long, if you're actually sitting down and putting in serious writing time every day.

I guess it's just outside my realm of experience, but I just haven't met any writers who took very long to write a novel, when they were sitting down every day and pounding keys.

To me, this is how the time should be measured. It isn't how many years it takes, it's how many hours of actual butt planted, head down, hands on the keyboard writing it takes. Five words per minute, two hours per day, five days per week means a completed first draft of 100,000 words in only a bit over eight months.

And five words per minute is ridiculously slow writing. So I always wonder just how many hows of actual writing someone puts into a novel that takes years to write.

Jamesaritchie said:

When someone tells me it took them many years to write a novel, I always wonder how much actual writing time was put into it. I don't understand it taking that long, if you're actually sitting down and putting in serious writing time every day.

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The actual writing of my first novel didn't take that long. I wrote the draft of it in about nine months, but that's misleading because I was busy with school for much of that time and not doing any writing. I was a teenager, and school took precedence over writing.

During the nine years I've been reworking that novel, I've also worked on many other projects (while going through college and working). While I still believe in the first novel, I also recognize that I need to work on other things.

These days, my first drafts can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months. It can take a bit longer if I'm writing more than one project at once.

Jamesaritchie said:

For a full-length novel, six months was the longest, but there was a good deal of downtime on that novel, periods when I had to set it aside to finish other projects. Shortest was three weeks.

When someone tells me it took them many years to write a novel, I always wonder how much actual writing time was put into it. I don't understand it taking that long, if you're actually sitting down and putting in serious writing time every day.

I guess it's just outside my realm of experience, but I just haven't met any writers who took very long to write a novel, when they were sitting down every day and pounding keys.

To me, this is how the time should be measured. It isn't how many years it takes, it's how many hours of actual butt planted, head down, hands on the keyboard writing it takes. Five words per minute, two hours per day, five days per week means a completed first draft of 100,000 words in only a bit over eight months.

And five words per minute is ridiculously slow writing. So I always wonder just how many hows of actual writing someone puts into a novel that takes years to write.

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Yeah, you probably understood how novels worked from the start then. Lucky you!

I know this first novel is taking long because I'm still learning how character and plot and all that works. I'm fairly certain my next novel will be much, much faster.

Plus, is anything you wrote an epic fantasy? Cause that's what I'm writing and I feel like that's probably the toughest sort of novel to write. You're making a world from the ground up. Anything set in recent times is much, much easier for me.

I certainly don't pretend that I was 'writing' the entire 22 years. Thinking out plot and worldbuilding issues, sure. In the last 28 years I have had four periods of time when I had no day job + enough money to keep financial/emotional stress at bay. During the last one, I wrote my debut novel. The rest of the time has not been conducive to the eight-hours-a-day optimal when writing.

To be fair, when I was not writing or working in commercial art, I was building my own freelance art career and catalog. That's gone considerably better than my writing.

And given that people all approach writing in different ways, I wouldn't be quick to say the 'writing every day, all the time' approach is practical for everyone.

Filigree said:

I certainly don't pretend that I was 'writing' the entire 22 years.

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Yep. Writing good novels is 90% head work. Sometimes things need to stew awhile.

I started actually writing when I finished college in April 2013. The story itself manifested in my mind some time in the winter of 2011, and the story became a baby version of what it is now sometime around May of 2012. I finished the first Act in July 2014. The story was crap, and I had to overhaul most of it. I'm three chapters into the second draft (out of 11).

Coming up on two years, and I haven't finished it yet... I really have only been concerned with the first Act for this entire time. The ending is clear, important points in the second and third are clear, but there is no solid path from end of Act One to any of those.

First novels are hard...

phantasy said:

Yeah, you probably understood how novels worked from the start then. Lucky you!
Plus, is anything you wrote an epic fantasy? Cause that's what I'm writing and I feel like that's probably the toughest sort of novel to write.

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I'm also writing a fantasy and feel like 3.5/5 years has been spent on world building and character/story development.

Filigree said:

In the last 28 years I have had four periods of time when I had no day job + enough money to keep financial/emotional stress at bay.
And given that people all approach writing in different ways, I wouldn't be quick to say the 'writing every day, all the time' approach is practical for everyone.

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Also this. If I'm working I can't write - I used to work 3 jobs from 9am-11pm almost every day. When I sat down to write after work I would just stare blankly at the screen. Sucked the soul out of me. That probably contributed a lot of the years, too. The writing everyday approach wouldn't have worked back then. Some days it was better to just go to bed and try tomorrow.

The Package said:

I really have only been concerned with the first Act for this entire time. The ending is clear, important points in the second and third are clear, but there is no solid path from end of Act One to any of those.

First novels are hard...

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Sounds like we're in about the same place.

I feel your pain, man.

chompers said:

Why can't my brain work that fast? I'm struggling with my current story, straining to get a few hundred a day.

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Ugh. I know how you feel.

Depending on how you count it, my first novel took one of the following amounts of time: 1 year, 15 years, 25 years.

I started writing Amadar in around 1988, I wrote about the first quarter of the novel, and then stopped. I thought about it a lot, but never finished it.

In 2002, I decided I was going to write that novel, so I sat down on my 39th birthday (10/1/2002) and started writing with a 1 year deadline. It involved recreating the first 50-odd pages from over a decade-old memory, but I wrote at least something on it every day, even if it was only one word, and had a completed first draft of around 110,000 words by the end of September 2003, a few days before I turned 40.

I ended up self-publishing a multiply revised version in 2013, after I had written another novel of my own, and ghostwritten two others.

Publication took a quarter century from the time I typed the first word; but I spent less than a year writing to get that first draft.

Well, it would depend on how you define "working on it."

My present MIP started life as a NaNo in 2008. I worked on it fairly consistently for a year or so, put it away for a while, took it back out, put it away, wrote something else, rinse and repeat until present day when I've pulled it back out again. It's now about 104K and edging into the climax, but still not finished with the first full draft. I've done all the major edits on the first 70K or so, but I haven't finished writing the story yet. I'm going to micro-publish it when it's finished.

Perhaps the longest I took with any book was my first. First draft was finished in 1979 and I reworked it steadily for many years, in between writing several other novels. Over the course of the next 25 years, I rewrote it about 30 times and at least 27 full drafts. Finally finished it in 2010, I think, and promptly trunked it. I've thought about dragging it out and seeing if it's worth polishing up and micro-publishing, but not until I'm done with the one I'm reviving again.

I've done books in 9-12 months, from inception to finished draft. I've taken years to finish a book. Each book has its own requirements and its own time table. Since I'm not looking to make a living off my writing, I can enjoy each story's uniqueness.

thank you for starting this thread. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who takes a while. I agree with what previous posters said- I'm still learning how to write a full length novel. My first long project was garbage, but I learned a lot from it in regards to description and basic structure. This is my second, and I've learned even MORE. I've been studying lots of writers digest books about plot and structure because that's my biggest problem. So far it's going on two years I'm still in Act 1. I go to 30.000 words but with editing I'm back down to 15,000 with rewriting. I'm trying to make headway into the next act.

I started my first serious novel in college in 1987, writing it in longhand on notebook paper in a 3 ring binder. I was half-assing it while I was in school and when I went into the Army, I took the book with me to Infantry Officers' Basic Course at Ft Benning. When I went home for Christmas, I accidentally left the book in my room at the Bachelor Officers' Quarters and a maid through it away.
I started writing it again after I got out of the Army, in 1992, this time on a computer. Finished it in 1995.
So, 8 years.

My first serious novel, which was my third over all, took about 6 years. For a little over 70,000 words.

That's about 30 words a day-- although this was before I really set a daily writing goal for myself so I wrote it pretty sporadically. This was all on a computer.

Not sure if this counts or not because I put this one story of mine in a box when I was 15 and sort of forgot about it before rediscovering it, reading it and then plopping it on a website (websites now). I'm 28 now so that'd make this one particular story 13 years old, much of what I did in the re-writing department was either take detail out that didn't seem to fit with the story or add in some detail that I thought would go well with what had already been written.

At current times, I'm on my 6 month of writing my newest sequel to that original work. Slow work but good work

Keep in mind, writing is not a race. No one gets points for speed.

In answer to the question, I've been working on my current WIP for close to 4 years now, which is the longest I've spent on anything (not counting raising my children, which is a never ending process).

Another thing to consider is what else you are doing at the same time.

Right now, I'm sitting at just over 39,000 words in my current WIP, which I started in the middle of June 2014. That doesn't sound like much at all, but I've also written over 200,000 words of paying copy for various clients in the same time period.

CuddlyClementine - are we the same person?!

I also can't write when I work - my headspace is filled with other concerns which saps my creativity right out of me.

I also can never silence the inner-editor - I need to be able to switch it off but it's so hard.

Axiomae said:

CuddlyClementine - are we the same person?!

I also can never silence the inner-editor - I need to be able to switch it off but it's so hard.

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Hello, long-lost twin!

I can never turn off the inner-editor inside me, either. It's probably why I've spent five years on the same book. (Although, today I have been good and written from the start and not edited anything... yet.)

I finished my first novel recently, over the span of about three months and it's only 50k. I'm adding 25k to it right now as I rewrite, then I plan on polishing each individual page so who's to say how long it will take in the end. (and all that is before I get feedback from betas. Needless to say it's a project I'm taking quite seriously as it's very close to my heart.)

I finished it over the course of NaNo but almost two years later and it still has yet to be edited or get to the second draft.

Quentin Nokov said:

I'm wondering, what's the longest you ever spent writing a story? Did you eventually get it published? Did you trunk it? Do you regret putting all that time into it?

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Not exactly sure but somewhere around 15 years. Kids and life kind of took over for a while but I finished it and sold it. And I don't regret a minute of the time I spent working on it.

My whole life! I still haven't finished one, and now I'm really sad about it--thinking of how I'm getting closer to 30 and haven't done so. ;_;

Miss Strawberrii said:

My whole life! I still haven't finished one, and now I'm really sad about it--thinking of how I'm getting closer to 30 and haven't done so. ;_;

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I felt that way at one point, not sad just disappointed.

Then I wrote the novel. It took me years to do it. 50k in about 4 weeks. I've shelved it for now, however I hope to pick it up after I'm done with this one. It'll probably be longer, and most of it is gonna get scrapped.

As for the current novel I'm working on, 120k in about a month and a half. This is just the first draft, though. Fingers crossed I can get the editing done within 3-6 months. I just took a week to prepare for the rewrites so I'm thinking that the time range should be reasonable. We'll just have to see.

Mind you I have no real job, just gigs. So I have time on my hands to work. That's just me, though.

I have time too! I think depression just tells me no! Evil thing! ><