Most of my writing experience was picked up under threat of monthly (sometimes weekly) deadlines. At my peak, I could reliably crank out about 1000-words in an afternoon. If I needed to do research or interviews, it usually took a few extra days. Now that I've decided to write actual books, I'm really curious to see what my level of productivity will be, without a local field editor breathing down my neck!
Yeah... I'm not counting my doing-something-else-but-thinking-about-the-book time in my 100 hours. If I counted all that? I don't even know. Definitely double the time, but probably more than that! Which means I don't spend much time staring at an empty page, because I either get up and do something else, or I have something to write.
I spend a lot of time researching, so while the book itself takes six months to a year to write, I can easily double that with research. For that reason, I try to keep a steady pace when writing, and try to research "enough", without overdoing it. I used to write a few pages every few weeks, but I find writing one page pr day is a lot better than seven pages once a week. And as for the research, I love doing it, and can easily waste months researching something. That isn't going to work when I try to finish a book, I try to narrow it down to researching only the stuff I 'need' to know. For instance, in my latest book, I wanted to include a Bulgarian mythological creature. I didn't know any Bulgarian legends or mythological stuff before I started, and I quickly realized there are TONS of cool stuff to dig into. But that means I can study it for years without even writing a single word in my book, so I picked the creature that fit the book the best, and ignored pretty much all the others. I do look into them for fun, but the book takes priority. It's the same thing with editing. When I first started writing, I wanted to make everything perfect, and rewrote parts of the book over and over. But over time, I've learned that it's never going to be "perfect", so I try my best for "good enough". There are always ways to improve a story, and that dreadful first sentence is never going to be perfect. Just accept it and move on. Find a sentence you're okay with, and leave it like that. In a worst case scenario, I had a friend who spent six months trying to get that first sentence right, but she eventually gave up and scrapped the entire manuscript. I kept telling her it was more than good enough, but she wanted it perfect, and didn't accept anything less. I haven't been in touch with her in a few years, but last I heard, she gave up being a writer entirely. Such a shame. She's very creative and a good writer, but could never get past the perfectionism.
I've only got one novel under my belt (~65k words) and this took me around a year to write, re-write and revise. I parked it in the drawer for a couple of months and now doing a second revision. Most of it was written during a 2 hour round trip daily commute to work on the train. Not an ideal environment, but until I have a bestseller and quit the job (dream on!), needs must! .
It depends on the book. Mostly, it takes me under a year from concept to completion, but there are some things that have just sat there for multiple years because I cannot figure out how to get to the ending that I want or that makes sense. But those become long-term projects that I return to between other things and eventually knock out.
Whats part takes you the longest tho? Really interested how the speed curve is going, although, let's make it easy and take an average if that is possible!
the first draft takes the longest in terms of actual fingers on keyboard time... followed by the first self edit. The editing and polishing takes longer in total time but as i said above thats because my editor and proof reader don't just work for me - and i tend to fill the waiting time by working on something else Length of time to first draft also depends on the length and complexity of the book, whether i already know the characters, and whether there is any hold up for research. Day of the Eagle was written in three bursts of activity because i was researching technical info between times.
