I've been working on mine for 6 years... eep!! I have set it aside for entire years in there though. I recently picked it back up and have been making great progress with the ending though, so I think I'm only a few weeks away from completing the first draft if I keep this up! The Progress Journal feature in this community has been quite helpful to me with this, actually. I find myself looking forward to reporting on my word count each day, so it has had a motivating effect.
Short-short story man here (for the time being). I started and finished two works this evening. They were both less than 1000 words a piece. I don't know; it's how I roll right now. When I retire, I plan to write novels. Maybe I'm fooling myself. Right now, my WIP's rarely stretch into the next day. Is this normal for a writer? You tell me.
Since mid-February and I'm on the third draft, hoping the fourth will be the last. It should be done before the end of the year. Meanwhile I've had other projects in the works for anywhere as long as a decade For whatever it's worth, my shorts are usually one-sitting deals too.
I guess I should mention that I had a break from actively writing for a couple months last year, though during that time I was still developing the story in my mind. And I don't write every day either; I need time to collect my thoughts.
I have two on-going projects right now. One of them I originally wrote the first 112k of in early-to-mid 2010. I abandoned it four chapters from the end after my outline suffered water damage and was completely illegible. Despite being unfinished, I would re-read it a couple times a year and get motivated to work on it again but then I'd just get frustrated and quit. In November 2016 I began writing the second draft. It was a large overhaul as the original story was far too convoluted. I stripped back the cast, moved the story halfway across the world (originally Japan, now it's set in England), and any sub-plots that weren't scrapped have been tied more closely into the protagonist's main goals. So, a little over seven years. Yikes. The second draft currently sits at 50k. My second project I began working on in January 2013 but it has been a struggle to write. I must have written the beginning 5+ times before I finally decided in March of this year to sit down and just focus on getting words onto the page. It sits at 37k currently and I'm really pleased with how it is coming along. So, four years for this one.
My current one was in progress for about 6 months before I dropped it at what I now realize was ridiculously close to done (over 80K words). I let it sit for about a year and have just now picked it back up. I'm going to try to finish it by the end of the summer.
