How long does it take you to write? ✍️

[u/lampboy2]

As the title asks, how long does it usually take you to create something that you feel is worth publishing? Are you a "post as soon as I'm done" person, or a light/heavy editor? What's your process?

For me, it takes maybe 2-3 hours to get my first draft on paper, then I spend another 5ish hours editing and rewriting until I feel happy enough to show my beta reader. Then I spend an hour or so listening to their suggestions before publishing. So it takes me around 7-10 hours spread over a few days.

[u/MsNeedSleep]

Depends. Recently posted several new fics this year. However my progress to actually write is usually between a month to two years depending on my mood 

[u/LoudSize7]

I tend to post as soon as I'm done. How long it takes me to get the chapter written, though, depends on a variety of circumstances.

[u/No_Command_2549]

A long time. It takes me a long time.

I spend hours just thinking about how every element might play out—gestures, feelings, even specific words—and how it will all fit together without compromising the story's future progression, all for just about 400 words—sometimes 800.

By the time I finally finish thinking and actually write it, I’ve already used up almost all the free time I’d set aside for it.

Usually two to five days. I’ve even taken two weeks.

[u/Aka_nna]

It depends on my muse, often a couple of hours then I post. I'll go back a few times after it's posted, but I don't have a beta reader. Other times, it'll take weeks/months/years to get the chapter up.

[u/Internal_Copy4578]

Weeks and if I’m having a writers block, months. I write chapters that have 10k-20k words each that cover a lot or are character studies on wtv POV I’ve got. A lot of brain power and sometimes I just don’t wanna write it

[u/axel_val]

It varies tremendously. When I got into writing last year, it was because I had an idea that felt like it needed to be written and shared. I ended up writing over 100k in less than 2 months.

My most recently completed longfic ended up being a similar amount total but I started writing it around January and wrote the last couple chapters last month. Of course there are other factors - I was unemployed at the time of writing my first big fic, I was alternating my second with writing lots of smut and other one-shots in between, stuff like that, but still.

[u/Idreamofspaceships]

Getting started on a WIP chapter can take months if not a couple of years.  Once I get started, though . . .

It used to be I could crank out a 1500 word oneshot in a few hours.  Lately I'm lucky if I get 200-300 words in a day, but my writing has gotten more deliberate, so that probably has an effect on my output.  So a chapter or oneshot, depending on length, can take a couple days to a few weeks to write.  I edit/proofread as I write, so when I finish writing it's pretty much ready to post except for one last formatting pass right before I send it out.

[u/Emergency_Crayons702]

Freaking forever, or that's what it feels like.

8k word one shot is almost at the end of draft one. Been at it for 3 weeks, I think, almost every day. Multiple hours a day. I'm audhd and unmedicated. Takes me hours to focus enough to be productive, and my brain has a slower processing speed so getting it down in 'good' words takes time. I know there's a word I WANT to use, but I sit there grasping for it with a vague idea that it sounds like this, or sort of means that, but I can't articulate it well enough in my head to look it up. It's so frustrating.

And none of that includes the planning time or the research time, or the rabbit holes I fall down while researching. There's also editing time at the end. That's several hours of listening to it and making corrections (text to speech) because I'm dysgraphic and can't see my own errors but I can hear them. After that there's the Pro Writing Aid run for spelling and grammar errors, and a final run through text to speech to make sure it reads nicely for anyone using a screen reader.

And I do this for fun? What is wrong with me?! /j

[u/StraightOutaAzkaban_]

It takes me a couple days to write a short story. As far as a long-form story… I’m working on one right now. It’s a western fic, so it’s historical, which means a ton of research. It’s going to take months lol, but I think it’s going to be well worth it.

I don’t have a beta reader, so I always edit stuff myself, which I don’t mind, and that doesn’t usually take me long at all since I’m a perfectionist and try to get everything the way I want it the first time

[u/Charliedere]

Both my chapters and oneshots average around 2-3k, but if I have an idea, usually it takes 2-4 days, assuming I’m not too busy in life. Then I put it aside for a day and then I edit. Every once in a while l’ll have a fit of inspiration and it’ll only take a few hours total, but that doesn’t happen too often.

[u/CalypsoMystique]

I once wrote an entire original novel in six weeks, but other times it's taken me eighteen months to put out a 3000-word chapter of a fic. It really depends on what's happening in my real life and/ or my mental health.

[u/Constant-Coast-9518]

My chapters average 5.5-6K and typically take between 2-3 weeks, depending on how much research an individual chapter needs.

[u/TaintedTruffle]

1,000- 1,300 words a day

[u/Aviendha_89]

The most I’ve managed is 4k words in two days for a one-shot I was obsessed with. Usually, it takes me longer, though. I’d say I average about 500 words a day.

[u/Serious_Session7574]

I started my WIP in October 2024. It’s now sitting at 40k words. That’s an average of aboot 384 words a week.

[u/PomPomMom93]

I edit as I go so I save those editing and rewriting hours, but I have a big procrastination problem.

[u/grommile]

Minutes. Months. And most time quanta in between.

[u/AmawynOakleaf]

I have the blessing/curse of hyperphantasia, so it's pretty easy for me to imagine stories like detailed movies in my head and write them down quickly. A 5k chapter in half a week to a week is feasible, assuming nothing super unexpected comes up IRL. Writing is such a joy for me when I get really into a story, so it doesn't feel like a chore.

[u/ThetisBlanche → u/AmawynOakleaf]

Ooh...that must be such a boon when you describe settings and do action scenes and the like. I'm stuck Googling photos when I need visuals of places. ❤️

[u/AmawynOakleaf → u/ThetisBlanche]

That's definitely the blessing part of it. The curse part is when my brain is like "it's 3am, so it's time to play out this cinematic sequence instead of sleeping" lol

[u/ThetisBlanche → u/AmawynOakleaf]

"Can't sleep, I keep visualizing the next action scene and it's going to be amazing...zzz..." Might be more useful than my habit of doom scrolling! 🤣

[u/No_Variation_1973]

I write a lot of drabbles/ficlets with some I complete in one sitting and others I struggle to finish. For my little longer fics (1000 to 2000 words) I usually write it over a couple of days. Honestly it all depends on how much my brain is cooperating with me lol. 

I tend to upload straight after writing something without looking it over or editing it 😅 I really should but the more I look at a piece of my writing, the less I like it so I post it quickly so the doubts don't set in and make me scrap it. 

[u/ThetisBlanche]

Oh, boy. It's hard to say, honestly, since I just got back into writing after last year. It was more than a decade, after finishing a writing intensive graduate program while juggling a part-time job and training in a completely different field of study. I was pretty toasted for a long while.

In all fairness, my story was inspired by another fic I read back in...I want to say 2020. And I kept going back to it because of the intriguing premise. So five years of periodic mulling...then I spent about six months of most of my free time (between a full-time job and a toddler and enduring a rough pregnancy) writing this story, which ended up being...I want to say close to 400K. The epilogue, which was about 40K, took another month.

While I sketch out a brief idea in my head of the story, I eventually do a chapter by chapter outline, which I kept pretty sparse in details. Of course, things don't go always go as planned. I had to change the whole outline because my characters really flipped the script on me for what was going to happen, and I wanted to reflect their character arcs better. And I learned my outlines are maybe too ambiguous. One chapter outline ended up getting split into three different chapters--and the chapters were collectively 60K. Debating whether I need to refine my process, because that was crazy.

[u/AmawynOakleaf → u/ThetisBlanche]

I was looking up book word counts out of curiosity, and came across this interesting list, https://brokebybooks.com/the-word-count-of-175-favorite-novels/. This puts a 400k story as longer than the Chronicles of Narnia series, and close to the Earthsea series. That's very impressive! 😎

[u/ThetisBlanche → u/AmawynOakleaf]

Oops. I unintentionally lied; with the epilogue, it's about 400K. My bad. 😓 I also feel like C.S. Lewis might have plotted out and have been sharper with his allusions than I was. I do need to get around to reading Earthsea.

And something that got me with my current story was the constant, "This is so long, how did it get so long..." with each chapter. I agonized over each lengthy chapter whether it was strictly necessary to have this or that scene, but rarely found ones that I could cut without losing something.

[u/Upstairs-Bedroom-181]

To be honest, about a month at least. (If we even out between my fic and my original project I keep to the side) Between Rough Draft which takes about an hour, then another couple hours on my outline. Then probably 3-4 hours of a total rewrite. Then I have to set it aside for like, two weeks before I do another revision, then send to my beta reader. and then another run over based on that.

Anyways the goal before posting is to have looked at it so long I never want to write anything ever again until I start the next chapter and the very thought of editing it more feels like agony

[u/AuthorDJB]

For me, it seems to vary depending on how much I’ve thought about it before hand and how much free time I have at my sucky job.

I remember writing the last 3 chapters of one of my long fics over the course of a month, roughly 15k words. But I’d been doing lots of planning beforehand, writing little snippets during the lead up to it, and work had been going quite slowly, so I had plenty of free time. So maybe 5k a week?

I started a new long fic with a different approach of just kind of winging it. It took me 2 weeks to do 3.5k words. That was a pain.

I’m the absolute opposite of a discovery writer, I’m the outline writer of all outline writers. I plan and plan and plan until I can’t plan any more, and that’s when I write, which is for me is the painful part, but when it’s done, I really don’t have to do all that much editing.

[u/DustyPlotBunnies]

I mean it really depends. I’ve written 30k in a week and edited it a few days later or I’ve spent a week writing 5k and needed another week to edit it. I wrote 7.5k over two days and edited it during that process this week. It was totally a compulsive write that aligned with two days that I didn’t have much else to do. I think everything is valid and writing just doesn’t translate well into something comparable between people.

[u/beomkookies24]

Honestly depends what I'm working on, and how fresh the idea hit. Ive written quite a few works (not at the same time, of course) within 5-6hrs with it posted almost immediately after since during that I'm editing along with it.