How long do you take to write your novel?

For me, I took about 5 days to write. Monday and Friday are the dates of releasing a new chapter for my The Youth Gang novel. Otherwise, the system shows 1 chapter/week which might be a error for me. But still, I may have some distractions like having a holiday at the release date, watching a new season of my favourite anime series and longer development. How about you guys?

Firestorm22345 said:

For me, I took about 5 days to write. Monday and Friday are the dates of releasing a new chapter for my The Youth Gang novel. Otherwise, the system shows 1 chapter/week which might be a error for me. But still, I may have some distractions like having a holiday at the release date, watching a new season of my favourite anime series and longer development. How about you guys?

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This would depend on the me now or the me from over half a decade ago.

Right now? Maybe a week if it is a oneshot, maybe a little longer if I am uncertain about the chapters making sense with the previous ones.
Back then? I'd write like... sorry, I can't describe that insanity. Nobody believed me back then. It took my editor to actually watch me write to start getting everybody to gang up on me about my physical and mental health.

Actually, I'm editing this in because it still stings when another author accused me for lying that I could write several novels, each chapter being roughly 10,000 words, in the span of a week. So, back then, that gives you some hints.

L1aei said:

This would depend on the me now or the me from over half a decade ago.

Right now? Maybe a week if it is a oneshot, maybe a little longer if I am uncertain about the chapters making sense with the previous ones.
Back then? I'd write like... sorry, I can't describe that insanity. Nobody believed me back then. It took my editor to actually watch me write to start getting everybody to gang up on me about my physical and mental health.

Actually, I'm editing this in because it still stings when another author accused me for lying that I could write several novels, each chapter being roughly 10,000 words, in the span of a week. So, back then, that gives you some hints.

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10,000 words?????????

Firestorm22345 said:

10,000 words?????????

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Yes. I didn't enjoy being accused like that over Discord in a public channel either because I was struggling at work and at home for a burning passion I never wanted to let go of; I was truly addicted to writing. In fact, back then, I didn't call myself an author. I identified as a writer because that was all I wanted to do. At work, I would even stop what I was doing, grab some scissors to cut or rip a piece of paper and jot down more ideas I had for my chapters to bring home and simply write more and more. I didn't want to stop.

To give you an idea of how dead on my feet I was, I walked straight into a wall at work because I dozed off making my way to the breakroom.

L1aei said:

each chapter being roughly 10,000 words

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I counted in pages. 11 pages, 5,000 words per chapter. I could write two a week, tops. Since then, I've been combing through those scribbles for five years, and the result is four chapters, each containing fifteen hundred words. And there is enough material for another 7 volumes. In fact, a page a day, but I am constantly rewriting.

L1aei said:

This would depend on the me now or the me from over half a decade ago.

Right now? Maybe a week if it is a oneshot, maybe a little longer if I am uncertain about the chapters making sense with the previous ones.
Back then? I'd write like... sorry, I can't describe that insanity. Nobody believed me back then. It took my editor to actually watch me write to start getting everybody to gang up on me about my physical and mental health.

Actually, I'm editing this in because it still stings when another author accused me for lying that I could write several novels, each chapter being roughly 10,000 words, in the span of a week. So, back then, that gives you some hints.

Click to expand...

I believe you. 100% I literally just wrote 4k words today. and 2k words earlier this week. 10k a week? Pff. Easy stuff.
I think.. 25-30k words a week would be my limit, BUT! HUGE BUTT!! That would HAVE to be a week I don't have work, or have distractions, or actually want to write. otherwise I'm good with 6-8k words per week. No problems with that. Don't believe me, check my latest uploads. They're there.

two days for 5000+ words if I want to lock in. But it could take me weeks just to finish one frickin' chapter

I give myself a rule to write 500 words per day. So maybe ~3 months for a full draft.

At my unhealthy peak it was around 15-20k words a week with daily releases of 2-3000 word chapters. These days it’s closer to 4-5000 a week because I spend more time editing and my daughter requires a lot more time and attention as a 4 year old than as a giant immobile bean.

Firestorm22345 said:

For me, I took about 5 days to write. Monday and Friday are the dates of releasing a new chapter for my The Youth Gang novel. Otherwise, the system shows 1 chapter/week which might be a error for me. But still, I may have some distractions like having a holiday at the release date, watching a new season of my favourite anime series and longer development. How about you guys?

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I am ultra slow ... 500 words a day max ...

I like to take my time with things. On a normal Draft 0 day, it can range from 500 to 1000 words (sometimes more). I spend most of the week/month editing and reviewing my chapter(s). Sometimes I scrap a whole chunk and do a full rewrite.

When I wasn't working, I put about two to three hours a day (on average) into writing, usually netting about three chapters (750-3000 words each) between two or three stories every two days.
That was cut in half when I started working (one, part-time job) again, and now (with two part-time and one 2-4 days a year job) is about 2-3 hours a week, and only one or two chapters between two stories (though I have been "stuck" in editing mode on the Pocket FM stuff due to quirks of their platform, and have lost a lot of actual writing time that way).

For me it just depends on the mood I wake up in. I have times where I can barely manage to write 1000~ words over the span of a week, sometimes I have really motivated days where I write 10'000+ words, always gives me the best sleep afterward.

L1aei said:

Actually, I'm editing this in because it still stings when another author accused me for lying that I could write several novels, each chapter being roughly 10,000 words, in the span of a week. So, back then, that gives you some hints.

Click to expand...

Seeing the replies, I may be misunderstanding this, is it ~10 000 words for all novels or separately (so more words) in a week? Because 10k words/week is horribly realistic and anyone who doesn't believe it are the weird ones. 20/30 000 words is crazy, but doable. Take the understandable 1k/hour and sell your soul to the devil (or sacrifice your sleep), and you can achieve it. There was even some dude on the internet who tried a 50 000 words in a week. He did it. It WAS horrible, but he still did it.

laum-hy said:

Seeing the replies, I may be misunderstanding this, is it ~10 000 words for every novel or separately (so more words) in a week? Because 10k words/week is horribly realistic and anyone who doesn't believe it are the weird ones. 20/30 000 words is crazy, but doable. Take the understandable 1k/hour and sell your soul to the devil (sacrifice your sleep), and you can achieve it. There was even some dude on the internet who tried a 50 000 words in a week. He did it. It WAS horrible, but he still did it.

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The NaNoWriMo challenge every November is a 50k novel in the course of a month. I did it once (I think 63k words, with two days to spare) - and that comes to about 17.5k a week to hit target.

CharlesEBrown said:

The NaNoWriMo challenge every November is a 50k novel in the course of a month. I did it once (I think 63k words, with two days to spare) - and that comes to about 17.5k a week to hit target.

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Yup, that's the wonder of a marathon for you. My record was 15k a week. Not for NaNoWriMo though (never done it), so I didn't have that drive to keep that pace longer, and I stopped after only 2 weeks. Anyone with good time management can keep a <20k in a week pace for a quite some time as long as they have enough creative juice in them and stubbornness.

Firestorm22345 said:

For me, I took about 5 days to write. Monday and Friday are the dates of releasing a new chapter for my The Youth Gang novel. Otherwise, the system shows 1 chapter/week which might be a error for me. But still, I may have some distractions like having a holiday at the release date, watching a new season of my favourite anime series and longer development. How about you guys?

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Mine usually takes a month or three weeks, depending on my ideas; this is an entire manuscript, not individual chapters. Then I take a month or two of rest before writing again.

laum-hy said:

Yup, that's the wonder of a marathon for you. My record was 15k a week. Not for NaNoWriMo though (never done it), so I didn't have that drive to keep that pace longer, and I stopped after only 2 weeks. Anyone with good time management can keep a <20k in a week pace for a quite some time as long as they have enough creative juice in them and stubbornness.

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Writing is easy. If we just write about our daily activities, 10k or even 30k a week is easy.

However, writing fiction isn't about word count... it's about bringing the story to live in the minds of the author and the readers. It's intellectual work, not just typing.

I measure in terms of the entire book.

I'll typically produce a rough outline over a week-long vacation. That's the hard part. So I set my career aside, take a vacation, and concentrate entirely on it. The story itself, in perhaps 10 pages or so. Sometimes much less. 3 to 10 pages, from beginning to end.

I might tell the story to a bunch of friends around a campfire or on a nature hike. If they don't love the ending, the story dies then and there.

Then I'll expand that into around 200 pages of paraphrased scenes, sample dialogue, sample interactions between characters to ensure they work plausibly together.

Then maybe six to seven months to write the book, and that's with constantly going back to ensure pacing, consistency, continuity. I'm currently writing very long books that develop slowly. My next project might have much shorter books. Whatever the stories demand.

Then one or two months of editing. Which I do manually. No assists. Except for spellcheck. But only as a first pass, because spellcheck sucks. The real spellchecking I do manually as well. With a bound/print unabridged dictionary. An American English dictionary for the most part, though I'll sometimes fall back on the OED.

I set it aside for a few weeks. Then I read it. If I like it, I might post it. If not, I don't.

So, for the stuff I'm writing now, about a year.

Write my novel? I assume you mean write a chapter? Or number of words?

Right now I am doing about 2 chapters and 5k words a day, give or take. Sometimes I take breaks, othertimes the ideas keep flowing and I get 12k out a day or so.