How long did it take you to write it?

[Torvaldr]

I have been working on one particular novel now for nearly ten years. I have a huge amount of respect for authors like Jim that can crank out one or two novels a year. So my question is how long did it take them to write the first one, and how long is it taking YOU to write your first?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I have been working on one particular novel now for nearly ten years. I have a huge amount of respect for authors like Jim that can crank out one or two novels a year. So my question is how long did it take them to write the first one, and how long is it taking YOU to write your first?

In the last decade or so, I have averaged about 90,000 words a year. Which is in the form of a number of complete novels that took fifteen months or so, and a number of partial projects.  I have one incomplete one that I have been working on since 1995, but that's because it's currently about 430,000 words and will probably come out at half a million, and that's pretty much not sensibly sellable as a first novel so I have been concentrating on more marketably-sized things.

I normally write Friday nights, and between two and five thousand words nine Friday nights out of ten adds up over time.

[blgarver]

The trilogy I consider my "main" work exists as a smattering of rough starts and fragmented scenes and hundreds of pages of indecisive notes, plus one pretty complex but incomplete map of the world.  I've been working on those books since I was 12...that was 13 years ago.  And I've essentially gotten nowhere.  I have a bunch of strong characters to work with, but I'm trying to hard to outline everything and force the plot on them.  I don't write that way...I need to just sit down and go with what I have in my head.

But the current one has been going a little over two years, and I'm in the final act; the last 30 pages or so.  It takes a long time when writing isn't your full time job.

[meg_evonne]

What is more important--how long it takes & how long the work is OR what you can measure in the improvement of your writing craft?  Sounds rather pompous, doesn't it? Sorry about that, but it is so much easier to measure improvement in the craft rather than completion of a work. 

I had an incredible instructor (nicolebakkat.com) one time flippantly say, "It's finished when it's published, but until that point you will probably always pull it out and re-work it." 

I've learned more this past year about writing, then in all the 30 years previously spent writing, because Jim's journal challenged me to be more critical and to work at improving my craft.  Ouch---one year later, I've had two online novel classes (taught by professionals with professional writers, columnists & editors as fellow students), took a college grammar class (yes, I'm 54), and now work with a patient writing coach who lets me suck up every bit of editing advise she has. I leaped the fence to have others read and critique my work.  One fence down, many more to go...   

More specifically to your question, I started a raw new idea in Feb 07, hope to have finished by end Dec 07, BUT I'm procrastinating. It sits at over 104,000 with only 1000 more to write. Technically it could be done tonight, more likely there's a lot of bone structure to pull out and make sure it's properly done.   It's actually been "done" for awhile, (yeah, i'm procrastinating--always a little more to polish, rearrange etc). 

In REALITY----Hold on, let me gather my horse in and face the next fence...  Once committed you have to take the fence or wipe out and geez my horse hates when I trip him up and we sprawl.  But until I chose to set him to the fence, we can dance around that fence for a heck of a long time, looking busy...

Best wishes on your work and your fences!

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

What is more important--how long it takes & how long the work is OR what you can measure in the improvement of your writing craft?  Sounds rather pompous, doesn't it? Sorry about that, but it is so much easier to measure improvement in the craft rather than completion of a work. 

Measuring the improvement of your own writing is like testing the security of your own code; it's necessary, but it's not sufficient, and ideally you want someone better than you to help (but optimally not someone so much better than you that you can't begin to grasp what they are on about, even if you're not like me in finding the thought of someone hugely much better than you wasting time on your manuscript when they could be writing something of which you'll be in awe rather uncomfortable.)

I think how long it takes and how much you write is possibly useful as an indirect measure because some ways you only get better by doing, so it will affect how fast you can get better in those ways

I had an incredible instructor (nicolebakkat.com) one time flippantly say, "It's finished when it's published, but until that point you will probably always pull it out and re-work it." 

No story is ever finished, it's just some of them you have to abandon.

Ouch---one year later, I've had two online novel classes (taught by professionals with professional writers, columnists & editors as fellow students), took a college grammar class (yes, I'm 54), and now work with a patient writing coach who lets me suck up every bit of editing advise she has. I leaped the fence to have others read and critique my work.  One fence down, many more to go...   

I think my considered reaction here is, go you.

[meg_evonne]

I think in the same discussion, Nicole told the story about a public reading from her own book and she came up to an absolutely awful editing problem and she realized it wasn't finished-but it was, because it was already published in black and white.  Arghh. 

[LizW65]

So far it's taken me a little over a month to get approx. 9500 words, otherwise known as Chapter One, down on paper (well, OK, disc), as I haven't tackled fiction writing in over a decade and am sorely out of practice.  As with any craft, it is becoming easier with doing, although there are days when I have to force myself just to boot up the laptop.

[Suilan]

I'm writing a Fantasy (epic) trilogy. I wrote the first version (about 500 pages) in 1996, in four months. (I was at Uni at the time, so I did have a lot of spare time to write.) It was the first thing I ever wrote, other than papers for Uni and one pirate short story. I sent the manuscript (i.e. the first draft: big mistake, I know! Amateur!) to a German publisher and got a contract, which I didn't sign. What can I say, I was young and naive. They wanted me to cut the entire middle part (spanning 5 years) without even allowing a sentence of transition; rewrite the ending (thus changing the entire meaning of the story); and change every little word exactly as the acquisition editor marked it (including all the grammar and spelling mistakes he added!) and I felt that I would be ashamed of the end result, rather than proud.

(I'm still not sure if not signing the contract was mistake, despite all the grief that followed.)

Since then, I have rewritten the story three times, not counting "normal" revisions. By rewritten I mean: from scratch. The story is very different now, only the main characters and the villain are the same, and the most basic plot idea.

I tried two more times to find a publisher (10 submissions altogether.) The first time, a major publisher requested to see the entire manuscript, but rejected it, including in their rejection a three-page evaluation of why the manuscript wasn't ready for publication yet. So I rewrote it again. The next time, I got as far as being ask to sign some agreement with the acquisition editor (who liked the manuscript) that if he could convince his boss and colleagues to do this, I would sell it to them.
Well, he didn't manage to convince them. 

Anyway, I am now translating the trilogy (about 1200 pages) into English. I've workshopped the first part at OWW, which proved at least that my English is good enough to compete with ye native speakers. I'm about 4/5 finished now. By February or March next year, I hope to be finished, and start looking for agents in the U.S. and UK.

Why am I translating it?

1) statistical reason. In Germany, 0.01% of all unsolicited manuscripts are published. In the U.S., 1% of all unsolicited manuscripts are published. Sounds like a piece of cake, compared. 

2) Because in Germany, especially in the fantasy genre, publishers are so used to translating novels that are already successful in the U.S. Minimal risk to them! At least 7 out of 8 books, if not more, are translated from English. Well, wouldn't it be a laugh if my trilogy got published in the U.S. and German publishers would have to buy the foreign rights to it after rejecting the original  !

3) Because it's fun. And a challenge. And if this trilogy gets published, I'll continue writing in English.

[KevinEvans]

We haven't done a novel yet. With our short fiction, we have a set of about 12 projects on deck at any one time, and we work on the one that holds the most interest for us at the time. As an example, we just submitted a 6500 word short, it took about 4 months real time but about 12 days actual writing time. Response has been good and we are working on the rewrite to fit it in to our shared universe.
On the other hand, we have a sequel short that has been languishing because we have to find the story in the middle of all the verbiage we have clumped in to the project. Our other problem is that any one project can "spark" two or three other new ones. can you say "Ohh Shiny!!"?
Regards,
Kevin

[meg_evonne]

Okay, so we write.  Some of us professionally with varying degrees of publication.

I am willing to bet, no question, that writing full time for me would kill it all.  Writing when the "urge" or the "creativity" hits me seems to be worlds apart from being forced onto a time table of some sort.  The whole idea makes my skin crawl.

Anyone have any comments on that from their experience?

[Craz]

I would like to give it a try sometime...

Unfortunately, I don't get to try this for another seven months. And even then, it's only ten weeks...school's a bee-otch.

[KevinEvans]

From time to time we get a request that makes a deadline mandatory. Mostly when we need to hit a certain issue of the magazine. Personally I have found that having a "Get it done by" date helps me concentrate, and most of the writers who support themselves with just their writing say that writing every day is a must. Most of the time even junk can be edited into something usable. Many writers say they start their writing time by editing the previous days effort, this gets them into the "Zone" and also gets the first edit out of the way.
Regards,
Kevin

Okay, so we write.  Some of us professionally with varying degrees of publication.

I am willing to bet, no question, that writing full time for me would kill it all.  Writing when the "urge" or the "creativity" hits me seems to be worlds apart from being forced onto a time table of some sort.  The whole idea makes my skin crawl.

Anyone have any comments on that from their experience?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Okay, so we write.  Some of us professionally with varying degrees of publication.
I am willing to bet, no question, that writing full time for me would kill it all.  Writing when the "urge" or the "creativity" hits me seems to be worlds apart from being forced onto a time table of some sort.  The whole idea makes my skin crawl.
Anyone have any comments on that from their experience?

I'm not a professional, but my experience is, unless I make myself set aside one evening a week to write, usually Friday, and make sure I catch up on any weekends I have to miss preferably in advance, I don't get a reliable few thousand words done every week.

I have no idea what difference it would make to not have to worry about a day job; I think I'd move at the same speed on any given project, but write more things at once.

[RMatthewWare]

It will have been two years in January (though I plan on finishing this draft and be done, for better or worse).  But it's also only been two years since I decided I wanted to be a writer.  So I went from wanting to be a writer, to gathering thoughts, outlining, first draft, revise, edit, revise, edit, to where I am now.  I've also written quite a few short stories and a first draft for my next novel, so I think I've done pretty good.  A lot of that time also went to figuring things out, learning some of my bad writing habits (like beginning a lot of sentences with 'so' or 'well') and learning how to edit in a way that is actually efficient (I think I've finally figured that one out).

[Kathleen Dante]

The first novel took me eighteen months because of the day job. But after that, the second and third averaged about nine to ten months. I'm trying to get it down to six months, but family, vacation and promo time get in the way (plus the distraction of the Internet).   

At the start, I only wrote when the urge hit me, but now I have deadlines I have to find ways to keep the motivation to work on the current manuscript flowing. Of course, sometimes a different story idea bites me in the butt, and I have to write down the details to get it to shut up.