How many hours a day do you write? How long on average does it take you to write a book?
There are authors out there that aim to write book a month. We’re not talking NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) where the goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November, we’re talking about kicking out a complete book each and every month including editing. I have no idea how they do that. Writing that many words in one month is tough, (and I have done it) but to throw in a comprehensive edit? Wow. Just wow.
But I guess they have more time to write than I do. During the week, I’m doing good if I get two hours a day to write. I spend additional time taking care of social media and publicity. In those two hours, I’m lucky if I get 500 words written. Weekends, I can get more written. If the characters are talking to me, I can write 1000 words or more in a day.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
At that rate, it can take me five to nine months to write a book. That doesn’t include the editing. Editing is easier, but it is also dependent upon other peoples schedules. (Especially when you consider how many rounds of editing one of my books goes through!) And it may be easier, but it’s also the part I despise. It’s so easy to miss things no matter how hard you try and how careful you are. That’s why my books go through three or four rounds of editing.
That means I typically release a book a year. (Okay, a book every ten months or so.) I’d love to write faster, but it is what it is. I’ve got enough ideas to keep me busy, and new genres I’d love to try. I’m leaning towards a hard core female PI or an action-adventure-thriller. Which do you think I should tackle?
I don’t like to compare my output to other writers, but I’m curious to see how fast the others on this blog hop write. Join me in the journey by following the links below.
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Hi P.J, I also write one novel a year or sometimes two novellas. There’s no point rushing.
Sometimes I want to rush so I can move onto another story. 🙂
When you have another life or do not write “professionally” (meaning full-time, that’s your job) a novel and year is quite acceptable. I can write a rough draft in three months, but there’s so much more to bringing a book to publication than the rough draft, so one a year is doable and every now and then it’s just works out that I manage two. Plus a short in an anthology, which is fun. Fun, I say. We can’t lose sight of enjoying at least some of the process or, else, why are we doing it?
The two times I wrote short stories for anthologies, they took almost as much time to write as a full novel. Fitting everything I wanted to into 10,000 words was hard work! Luckily, the editing process was shorter!
I do put a lot of time into the shorts, but it’s great advertising for Transformation Project since it’s an agorist/voluntaryist group and that’s sort of the theme of the series — an apocalyptic where government is NOT the answer.
I write more than one novel a year, but I’m very lucky to have few other commitments. My editor is booked months in advance, so I can get on with other work while I’m waiting for her to catch up. That being said, if I don’t get the ideas, I don’t write anything at all. It’s fascinating to see how different we all are at doing the same thing.
Of course, it also depends upon on how long your stories are.
It seems that most of us write a novel a year. As far as I can tell, many traditionally published authors also write one book a year. Writing is hard work and time consuming.