Novel How long should we really be spending on a novel?

Here's my question: How long should we, ideally, be spending on a single novel, if our goal is to be a published novelist?

I know in the past from dozens of different threads, "as long as it takes" is a popular answer, but it's not really one I've ever been satisfied with. All of us (to my knowledge) have a finite amount of time to finish a novel. Moreover, I'm assuming that even a good novel has a certain probability of getting picked up, which means you might have to go through the querying process more than once before you're successful.

As a published author, I'm assuming you may have contracts with actual deadlines. Should we unpublished authors therefore have self imposed deadlines? Is there a point where we should be saying "I've worked on this novel for x years, any imperfections left can either get picked up by the editor or just endured by the reader"?

@BayView I'm particularly curious about your opinion on this

 

Hmmm...

I don't know?

I mean, first novels are different from later novels, I'd say. And expectations vary from genre to genre...

I think for first novels (or number whatever novel, until there's one that's published)... keep working on it as long as you're having fun and as long as you feel like you're learning something? Maybe? As long as you have a concrete reason to believe you're actually improving it, not just taking out a comma one day and putting it back in the next day?

I think a lot of what takes a lot of writers so long with their first novels is that they aren't just writing a novel; they're learning to write. So then subsequent novels, one hopes, will come more quickly?

There's also an element of personal style/focus. I'm a storyteller. Once I've told the story, I'm done, and rewriting/editing/polishing is a total pain in the ass. Other people are wordsmiths and want every line to be perfect. And they seem to enjoy the fiddly little stuff that drives me up the wall. So for them, it makes sense to take longer than it would make sense for me to take.

Self-publishing makes all this more complicated, but if someone's looking for a publisher, maybe it makes sense to send the "imperfect" MS out to a few agents to see what happens? Not all top agents, but at least a couple top agents in there, just in case?


Also - I don't believe there's any such thing as a perfect novel, so I think anyone shooting for perfection is setting themselves up for frustration. I can read great works by acknowledged masters and still nitpick, if I'm in the mood to do so. So I definitely don't think it makes sense to hold out for perfection. But I can't say just how far short of perfection someone should be willing to fall.

 

Some people get one finished in 3-6 months, if they happen to be able to
pound one out that fast and edited.

 

A lot depends on the genre. In some, it's common for a full-time writer to write a novel in a month, and the fastest writers might write one in a weekend.

In other genres, you're expected to spend years. Or you're writing an 800-page epic where you literally can't get the words down that fast even if you just sit there and type all month without much time for thinking or revision.

 

I think there's a huge amount of It Depends. But, yeah, I'm trying to set personal deadlines.

I do NOT want the HFN to take me five years to finish. It's been about fifteen months so far, and I suspect it's going to take a little over two years (I'm thinking 27 months, a full year from now) to get to the point where I've done everything I can with the abilities that I currently have, and the novel is no longer helping to increase those abilities.

Then I start submitting the thing and start the next one.

I'm under the delusion that the next one will take more like eighteen months, assuming it doesn't require a ton of research, and none of my three pending ideas require a ton of research. If it's a sequel to the HFN, it would probably go faster, but does it make sense to write a sequel to a first novel, so that my second novel is essentially trapped in line behind the first? I'm thinking no. It would be delightful to imagine that I could sell the HFN someday, but I don't think I want to put that many months in that one basket.

HFN is one kind of novel. Tulips and Butter is a very different kind of novel. And Shuteye is another very different kind of novel. If my goal is to be a published novelist, it seems to make sense to throw out hooks in different directions.

Actually, if I take a six-week or two-month break between drafts for the HFN, I might actually outline (gasp!) a middle grade version of Tulips and Butter and see if I can knock off a nice big chunk of it in that time.

Maybe.

I realize I'm drifting beyond your question.