I totally agree! Rewriting takes so much longer, at least for me. I can produce a first draft in a few months (2-4) but then It will take more than double that time to polish it. I have no doubts that working on rewriting and revising for a year or more is nothing strange at all. The worst is, I think, right now that I have to replot and rewrite bigger part of the novel and have to switch on the creativity again and I don't know where to find it, I think it left for holidays somewhere after I finished the first draft on my latest novel. And this story is so old that it is hard to still be creative about it. I don't know how to change it anymore, or if it will even make it better, I just know it need more work to be as good as I want it but I have no idea what approach I should go for.
when working on something major, i've been known to write nonstop for 18-20 hours/day, for weeks at a time, not even remembering to stop and eat, unless someone brings me food... i think it's what you youngsters call 'being in the zone'...
To me it's fast. I write around 700 words a day, but maybe I just lack enough discipline to sit there and write even when I hate it. I end up writing a bit then I go procrastinate on these forums. :L
i wasn't 'retired' back when i was often doing that... i'd merely arranged my life in a way that allowed me to write full time, while being a stay-at-home single mom of my youngest 2 [4 & 10 at the start of my writing career] of 7 kids, the other 5 being grown and gone by then...
It takes a different time for everyone depending on their style and story. I have variance in my first drafts -- some take a while and some seem to fly by.
It seems that we broke some important rules about posting songs without mentioning the author...I assume that all the traditional tunes would be automatically deleted.
I was wondering the same thing... I thought "didn't I post a reply on this thread or was I just dreaming that?" Nice that somebody else than me brought it up.
Totally agree! I'm doing rewrites on my novel right now and I am in the same boat. I actually know HOW I want to change it, I'm just currently lacking the motivation.
There was a newspaper article in my local paper a while ago that said a local would-be author had written the first draft of her first novel, all 300 pages, in 3 days. Having worked on my own novel for the past 3 years, this news was kind of depressing. However, the article didn’t have much to say on the quality of that first draft. How quickly a piece of writing is done, I think, depends on a lot of things. How quickly you write, how much you write in a span of time, the quality of what you write, how often and how thoroughly you re-write, etc. I have no doubt that 3 day novel is a far cry from being ready for publication.
Definitely not. Personally, I don't think it matters how long you take. If the finished piece is good, then it's good and well done. There is too much pressure on writers to write vast pages and to write it fast. Remember, Harper Lee only wrote one book in her life time. She's not the only one, either. Take your time, enjoy it.
