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How long did it take you to write it?

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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:

--- Quote from: Torvaldr on November 22, 2007, 05:20:29 PM ---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?

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: meg_evonne on November 28, 2007, 09:30:38 PM ---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. 

--- End quote ---

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


--- Quote ---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." 

--- End quote ---

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


--- Quote ---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...   

--- End quote ---

I think my considered reaction here is, go you.

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