How long did it think it would take you to write your novel and how long did it actually take you? I thought I would finish my novel in three months. It took me three months to write the first chapter. Then I needed a break and moved onto something else. Recently I have gone back to it with a stronger focus and a desire to finish it quickly. I'm aiming for an edited and polished version sometime in February. I am editing as I go and then reediting as I go a little more. I'm not saving it all to the end. And I'm feeling good about what I have, but I'm nowhere close to done. I don't know if people here saw my other thread asking how short a novel could be. I'm taking more time than NANO, but does this seem like a realistic goal, and does anyone have any tips for reaching it on time? Were you able to stick to your timeline for finishing your novel? If you were what helped you do that because I've already failed to meet more than one self-imposed deadlines for this project. I just really want to finish this. I feel like if I don't finish this somewhat quickly, I won't finish it. How long did it take you to finish your novel? Were you aiming to do so quickly? Any tips for pulling this off? Thanks, guys.
I will be very surprised if this first one takes me less than two years. Started in June, I think I'm decently on track to have a first draft finished by April, but there will be, I suspect, several more drafts after that. The actual writing is edited per scene as I go along, but I'm confident that there will be lots of plot and structural changes to make.
The first draft of my current main project took me 2 months or so. I was very diligent and I had a program for scheduling and rewarding myself for completing my goals. These days, eh. It's easier to reward yourself when you're not in debt. Rounds of revisions for it have taken varying amounts of time, partly due to the speed of finding beta readers and how fast they can read. I started writing a completely separate project in August and 4 months later it's at 17k words and not close to completion. Partly due to my lack of reward/regiment system, partly due to my keep going back to revise and work on the first project. Tis' the one closest to being publishable, after all.
I always aim to do everything quickly. My first novel took a lot longer than I thought, especially the revising/editing part. I thought I could do that in three-four months, and it turned out to be about 8-9 months instead. I estimate the whole book took at least a year and a half (working everyday), maybe even closer to two years. There were just so much stuff I didn't realise would be so time-consuming. A lot of it was just try-fail cycles back then too. An adventure in itself! But I was figuring out my process at that time, and tried different things to see what worked for me. Once I finished that first novel I had a better idea of what worked, and novels started to come together a lot quicker. Even though most of them are not fully edited yet, they took almost half the time (compared to my first one) to reach that near complete state.
First book— three years. Second book— one year. Third book— three months. Fourth book... it looks like this one is going to take me another year. I’ve been “just a few weeks away from finishing” for months. I don’t have any advice, but if anyone else does, I’ll take it.
Depends on how busy I am. I can knock a first draft out in 4-6 months when I have time to write every day, which isn't happening right now. Looking at my progress journal, I did about 10k words in the first 21 days but probably only wrote on 14 of them. Good news is that once the holidays are over I expect everything at work to calm down so I should be able to pick up the pace a bit. My goal is to have the first draft in the can by the time summer arrives, which would put it at about 7 months total. Whether that's feasible or not is anyone's guess. The less said about editing and rewrites the better. That has taken me years before. Again, with some luck, this one will be more thoughtfully constructed the first time around and not require a wrecking ball for draft 2.
My first novel took me about a year of writing 3-4 times per week, with the first draft coming in around 150K words. I had a crazy boring job back then that left me with plenty of mental energy when I got home, and I also was able to sneak in writing during my downtime at work as well. I didn't really have an expectation of how long it would take to write my first original novel; honestly, when I started I didn't even know if I'd be able to finish it, so I was happy just to get to the end. I wrote 80K of my second novel over 8-9 months, then got stuck and abandoned it over for 2 years. I just spent the last 4 months or so finishing it with the first draft coming in at around 90K. So that one was about 3 years total but only around a year of actively working on it. Based on my first two times at the rodeo I figure I can crank out one novel around the 100K mark out in a year if (and that's a big if) I don't abandon it for an extensive period of time along the way.
123K roughly nine months. Second (in prog) not sure, as it is at 79k and just a hair over a year in writing it to that point. Hopefully I can finish before this time next year. Just depends on mood, motivation and will, and trying to keep the story moving as it is a progression to an ending of the first. So who knows. 7-8k shorts can be pounded out in 2-3 days, week tops.
My first one took me literally forever in that I don't think I ever finished it and I have no plans to in the future. Ones I've actually finished are about 1-2 years for novel lengths stories I've writtn in my own, and about 4-6 months for stories I've worked on with a help.
