How long to write?

Hi, love2write.

Of course it varies! Some folks take years to write a novel. My first took four months, not long after the birth of my second child, but only because I never slept!

Our genre needs to fall around 80K (between 70 and 100, aim for 80ish). There are some exceptions, but not many.

Much luck!

Start writing. Don't worry about how long other people take. That's like worrying about how long other people take when they vacuum their house or use the restroom. There's nothing to be gained from it because circumstances and individuals are so vastly different.

My first novel took 6 months while working 50 hours a week and attending grad school. My second novel was just restarted in Sept. and after 3 months, I'm only 10k into it.

Write on!

Excellent advice from Clair. Just start writing and worry about the time when you run out of it.

Good question about length, though. Back when I first started writing (stone tablets, clay, cuneiform) mysteries averaged 60-80K words. Now they want them a bit longer, about 80K up.

And best of luck with your project.

It takes as long as it takes. Mine are really never finished. I'm constantly editing and rewriting.

Lengthwise, Heyjude is right. There are exceptions. I wanted to send my novel to a small press in New England but they want 50-70k, mine was 84k. I've cut it to 74 and just don't see how I can make it any shorter. I'm going to try again tomorrow. They're only open to submissions until next Monday or something. Now if only they wanted something longer, that would be easy!

How long does it take to write a M/T/S novel? Until it's done. Simple as that.

Figure out how many words you can write a day, which is limited both by the amount of time you have to write and how quickly you can think up your story. If you outline extensively, then you'll write faster, but of course you'll spend more time outlining.

I figure you need to "write" the story four times. The first pass is the outline, or if you don't outline, it's a rough draft, the second pass completes all the story elements, the last two passes are rewrites.

So if you're able to write an hour a day and five hundred words (two pages) in that hour, your entire book should take you between 400 to 800 days (50,000 to 100,000 words).

This is just my personal estimates--I'm sure other people will come by and say they don't fit these guidelines, but I think that 400 to 800 hours is actually pretty typical--it's not 40 hours, and it's not 4000 hours.

Forever - that's the fun part!

love2write - I was also working on a novel when I was in high school. Looking back on it now, it was horrible, but... I was writing and developing my skills as a writer. There's nothing wrong with writing just to write. I did that for a long, long time. Now I'm still writing for myself, but at the same time I'd like to see it published. If I really wanted to get published, I could probably sit down and write something formulaic and get it sold. But I still write for myself first.

So write when you have time, write for yourself and don't worry about trying to get it published.

I don't think that m/t/s novels take more or less time than other novels. Some people are more mentally organized than others. I have heard of novels published that have taken 5-7 years to write, but I think that that time length is a bit extreme. I have also heard about the one month turnaround. That's too short for me. I think if you pace yourself every day, even try to get a page or two done per day, you will see before long you will be turning out a substantial amount of work. It is too bad NANOWRIMO is almost over, but that is good training ground for writing every day. Nano people try to get out about 1,666 words per day, or 50K per month. But writing and "developing plots" can take different rates. In my present WIP I have been struggling with details of a runaway plot for a while, and also I had personal problems interfere in my writing for over a year. Right now, I am getting back into writing, and have 3 months before I am working and going to school again, so I hope to finish the novel in 3 months.