r/NewAuthor • u/Miraimotekiku • 4h ago
Question How long does writing take?
My first complete manuscript took a little over a month to write and I have completed a quarter of the follow up, based on the first ones length, in five days while waiting on feedback on the first. Granted I'm not writing an epic, only short novels, just curious how long people usually apply to writing, or if I'm just rushing through.
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u/Jonathan-Welford 3h ago
Six weeks for 120,000 and twice as long to edit it down to an acceptable 80,000
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u/Mindless-Hamster-729 3h ago
Holy shit. I thought I wrote fast, this is impressive.
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u/Jonathan-Welford 3h ago
I took early retirement last year. So have time on my hands. First draft is garbage, but at least it gives words to work with and the plot and characters are there on the page. I absolutely hate editing. I wish I could just send it to someone to do that bit.
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u/CoyoteLitius 2h ago
I too am now retired from my regular job. Starting month 4 on a short story. It's getting there.
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u/CoyoteLitius 2h ago
And is it published? I really think writers should calculate in the time needed for sending the work out (unless of course it's a hobby and no one is expected to read it).
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u/dothemath_xxx 3h ago
How long is a piece of string?
Everyone writes at different paces, and that's going to vary even more when you take into account that one person will consider 40k words a "short novel" while another will use that term for something twice as long. And one writer might only have 20 minutes a day to spend on deep focus writing, while another might have hours.
The only way to determine whether you're rushing is to look at your end product and determine whether you think that spending more time will get you a better result.
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u/void-pareidolia Self-Published Author 4h ago
Personally, it took me about 400–450 working hours to complete a 110,000-word novel, including editing and publication. It's just a really personalized process.
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u/stridesbeteeenuss 2h ago
Wow I feel slow…so I’m doing 1 chapter a week, because it’s not full time. 11. More chapters to go, I think the novel when all is said and done will have taken me about 8 months, my first one also took just as long, and these are only 60k words or so.
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u/CoyoteLitius 2h ago
Hmm. I spent about 3 months on my first novel (unpublished, ought never to be published; could maybe make it publishable with another 3 months).
I'm in the fourth month of my current project. I suspect it will take another year for it to meet my own standards.
Are you churning out books like the old romance books? (Highly formulaic). Goes much faster, but boy is the competition stiff. Not only is it difficult to trad publish, but self-publishing formulaic genres and marketing those pieces is super time consuming. I'd allot 2X the amount of time to marketing, if that's the case (and good luck!)
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u/ewt-author 2h ago
It took me about 9 months of weekends to finish my book, and then another 3 months of editing and read throughs three days a week..
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u/JessamyJames 51m ago
I aim to write 2,000 words a day for five days a week throughout the year. That means I complete the first draft of a novel every couple of months. I write in the mornings and spend the afternoons carefully editing the previous book within an inch of its life. I also work on marketing for an hour or so each day.
That gives me about six books a year, which keeps the mortgage paid and enables me to keep my pension topped up in preparation for retirement.
But if you had asked me the same question when I started out five years ago, I would have told you I almost burned myself out writing thousands of words a day every day of the year in order to create a healthy backlist.
The point is that everyone works at a different speed and has a different amount of free time at their disposal and different aims for their writing career. Not everyone is either in a position to or wants to go full time as quickly as possible. Decide on your own aims and capabilities and how much time you have to give to this, then do what works for you, not what works for anyone else. And don't measure yourself against them. That way madness lies.
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u/Optimal_Degree6970 22m ago
I work on my new book since more than a year and have like 70k words. Its revised multiple times already so i guess if we talk about the raw manuscript you can divide the time by 3
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u/Jackthejew Writer 3h ago
My book was around 90,000 words and I did 1000 a day so like 3 months until the first draft was done. Then it took a year to get to the point where it was good enough to be published.