Torana, I understand what you are saying about quality, but I think when it comes to the rough draft, there needs to be a balance between quality and quantity. My current rough draft has a pretty good story, but the writing quality sucks and there is no way in hell I could get it published. My revision is waaaay better, but even that is probably not good enough yet. I just think that 99.9 percent of writers can't come up with a quality rough draft. Sure, you want to have some idea where you are headed when you start writing, rather than blindly setting forth. But worrying about perfection in the rough draft just seems wrong. I believe quality comes later, word by word, in the revision process. Trying to write a high quality rough draft is a game for the geniuses, and I aint one of them.
At the end of the day, one needs to worry about getting their story done, period. Not worrying about how long it takes. If i took caffeine pills, I'm sure i could write an 80k novel in 3 days. i i wanted too. Then spend the next months having to figure what i just wrote and spend a lot of time editing it (And lets face it, pretty much re-writing the whole darn thing) But whatever floats your boat. I like the three month rule for first drafts.
I'm going to be honest, this thread makes me feel discouraged. Reading how fast some people can write novels . . . . I absolutely can't compare. For me, I obsessively plan before I even begin writing. I write down as many ideas and notes as I can come up with and organize them into an outline complete with character profiles and a detailed description of the entire setting. Add onto that research and I'd be lucky just to finish the OUTLINE and begin writing after a month of working on it. The novel I'm working on right now I've been working on for a year and 2 months so far and I'm about 3/4 way finished with the final draft. (Rough draft I finished a long time ago and have just been writing the rest over and over again.) I've just been trying to get fast enough to write a novel in a year. I can't imagine doing it in a month or less which is apparantally possible.
Okay, I'll admit that I glanced through this thread. However, one thing that NaNo does is show a person that they can come up with a piece of prose that is X-times larger than they have ever achieved before. For some people, even though it is not polished, it proves that they have the fortitude to complete an extended story. And this is a stepping stone on their writer's journey.
OK Katica - ultimately what you produce by way of final draft of your work is what is important. Not how fast or how good or how bad they write their first draft. Its what goes off complete with covering letter and synopsis that is going to matter. However I am not going to hide the fact I write fast - it can be just as discouraging as a new writer not just to see what other writers do, but to be actively told that what you are doing is wrong. If you are plugging away writing slowly but getting works completed no one is going to actively tell you that is the wrong way to do it. You write fast and all of a sudden people start telling you its the wrong way. Neither is. If you have a first draft which you look and are pleased with, then a final draft which is the best you can make it - then the way you write is right for you.
