# How long does it take you to write something?



## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 7, 2009)

There's this thing which has been worrying me greatly since I began taking the (co) writer experience: the huge delays.

The story we had planned, actually, could go as far as 4 - 5 books, each exploring a different theme. From the ideas we had and keep having concerning the first book, I assumed we could easily divide it in five to ten parts, this time exploring different settings/locations/topics. And from what we have written so far, as well as comparison with other works of fiction, I came to the conclusion that each of these parts would weight about a hundred thousand words. (For those of you who didn't knew, that's a 400-pages book)
So yes, we are technically speaking of five two thousand pages books, something nobody would read in real life, but covers a long enough timespan if released episodically on the internet to gather a wide enough audience, and, unlike TV shows, allow people to board the train while it already is running. (As long as the series are archived)

Some quick calculations later, I found out if I had wanted for us to finish this story within the next five years, we'd have to write on average 2000-3000 words/day. (Twice, considering there is an OV, then a translation to be done, with our current settings. I might eventually cover more of this if needed as I gain skill, however)

And from, once again, what I had written so far, I (very innacurately, this will change later) averaged my writing ability at 1000 words/hour, complete. (It took me two weeks to write this much, but mainly because I couldn't be assed to do anything and never wrote more than a sentence at a time, and I quickly finished the second half of that chapter in 30 minutes.) (To give a concrete example, I spent half an hour on this post which is slightly under the 500 words, considering it is much more harder to express myself in english than in french, my pen language.) I'd like to see myself as moderately skilled at this task, and so I can write with little editing, no need to revise for grammatical/spelling errors that I correct as I go, and still create a product that I think should be on par with the average (acceptable) anthro fiction, in the measure where comparison is possible.

Now, writing two-three hours a day doesn't bother me much, but I'd still like to know if that is a little or a lot for such a project, and also get your opinions on this. (*How much time do you, other writers, spend when working on your projects?*)

(Side note: Yes, I am aware I am speaking of doing twice in a day what I have done in two weeks, but we're still going through the building/experimentation phase and will eventually move over to development, where things will be much quicker.)

(Final side note: Don't let Makmak anywhere near this thread, or he'll have a heartstroke.)


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## AshleyAshes (Jul 7, 2009)

My answer to that question is directly and inversely proportionate to what video games I'm playing at the time and what's on TV.


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## Gavrill (Jul 7, 2009)

I don't have a set time. Sometimes I don't write at all, sometimes I write for a good 3-4 hours a day.


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 7, 2009)

AshleyAshes said:


> My answer to that question is directly and inversely proportionate to what video games I'm playing at the time and what's on TV.


Hahaha. We really need a "guide for the average aspiring writer", for a change from Renard's overly intellectual essays on fiction's composition.
Maybe I'll give it a shot if I can managed to get myself out of my actual situation, heh.

EDIT: Shenzebo, how much do you end up writing through these 3-4 hours periods?


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## Gavrill (Jul 7, 2009)

FrancisBlack said:


> EDIT: Shenzebo, how much do you end up writing through these 3-4 hours periods?


Usually only a chapter or two. I'm OCD, so I often end up re-typing it a few times.


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 7, 2009)

Submitting a chapter a day sounds awesome, are you sure this isn't speedwriting?


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## Gavrill (Jul 7, 2009)

FrancisBlack said:


> Submitting a chapter a day sounds awesome, are you sure this isn't speedwriting?


It may be. But lately I've been losing my touch. It's usually about half a chapter a day now, which still isn't too bad. 

I prefer quality over quantity though >.>


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 7, 2009)

Ah, really? Do you really have to choose? I prefer both.


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## Mangasama (Jul 7, 2009)

It varies with the format I'm working in.

On story-form material, I spend several days roughing out sequences and particular bits of dialog on littlebits of paper, then just compose first draft as I enter. It usually takes 4-5 hours for a 40-50 page piece (if I've done a lot of this prep). 

On a comic book script, I usually take 5-15 hours, beacuse I block out the pacing by page, storyboard the angles and shots I'd like the artist to use, then generate the actual  plot and dialog in script form.

There're exceptions to the rule. I wrote the first 4 issues of HAVOC, INC. as a test, and did those over a weekend. <wince> And I think they show it. Not my best work.


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## foozzzball (Jul 7, 2009)

If the muse hits me hard, 1500 words an hour plus. And when coming up to a deadline I've clocked in around ten thousand words a day.

... This sort of thing only happens once in two years, however. (Edit: Also I hate my results when I rush on it.)

If we average it out, probably sixty words a day.

(Edit: What I mean to say here, basically, is that you need to factor in time you're not writing as 'work' time. While you're thinking about it, prepping, etcetera.)


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## robotechtiger (Jul 7, 2009)

I'd like to gauge just how much I do in a day, but reality keeps interrupting me.


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## Poetigress (Jul 7, 2009)

You know, I see this in a lot of comments to artists, with people wondering how long it took them to paint this or color that or sketch something else.

Really, what difference does it make? In terms of this particular project, you can estimate all you want, but you're never going to know for sure how long it'll take until it's done. Life gets in the way; scenes and chapters you thought would be easy to write are hard; those you thought would be excruciating turn out to fall perfectly in place; things need more or less revision than you planned on. (And since you're collaborating with someone else, all the variables get doubled, at least.)

In her LiveJournal, Laurie Halse Anderson said it best in a comment to someone who was worried about being a slow writer: "Slow, fast - it doesn't matter. They never print on the cover how much time it took the author to finish writing the book."

Just write until it's done. You'll learn along the way where your comfort zone realistically is in terms of production and scheduling.


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## M. LeRenard (Jul 7, 2009)

> They never print on the cover how much time it took the author to finish writing the book.


Just a stupid aside: on the copy of _From the Dust Returned_ that I read (Ray Bradbury), it advertised that it took him some specific number of decades to write it.  So I wouldn't say 'never'.


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## GraemeLion (Jul 7, 2009)

I generally aim for 110,000 words for a novel.  My quota is 5 days a week at 3000 words a day.   That means, generally, around 40 days.    (Or 8 weeks)


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 7, 2009)

Poetigress said:


> You know, I see this in a lot of comments to artists, with people wondering how long it took them to paint this or color that or sketch something else.
> 
> Really, what difference does it make? In terms of this particular project, you can estimate all you want, but you're never going to know for sure how long it'll take until it's done. Life gets in the way; scenes and chapters you thought would be easy to write are hard; those you thought would be excruciating turn out to fall perfectly in place; things need more or less revision than you planned on. (And since you're collaborating with someone else, all the variables get doubled, at least.)
> 
> ...


I thank you for this comprehensive reply.

However I'd still like an idea of the year when I'd be able to wear a promotional shirt at AC without looking like a complete idiot.


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## GraemeLion (Jul 7, 2009)

FrancisBlack said:


> I thank you for this comprehensive reply.
> 
> However I'd still like an idea of the year when I'd be able to wear a promotional shirt at AC without looking like a complete idiot.



Well, if you write 3000 words a day, you can get a first draft done in about 2 months.  From there, I'd gather another 2 for rewrites and such.  Throw two months of planning in front of that. Then, it all depends on how you're publishing it?  Whatever leadtime they desire.

So if you push.. and have good editors.. and work dedicated, you can likely have two out a year?  If you do nothing else..


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 7, 2009)

redcard said:


> Well, if you write 3000 words a day, you can get a first draft done in about 2 months. From there, I'd gather another 2 for rewrites and such. Throw two months of planning in front of that. Then, it all depends on how you're publishing it? Whatever leadtime they desire.
> 
> So if you push.. and have good editors.. and work dedicated, you can likely have two out a year? If you do nothing else..


 Oh, I was more trying to find out if I was underestimating or overestimating myself by having a 2000-3000 words/day goal.

And I don't work that way. I'll do drafts of every chapters, then we'll revise them, translate them, and release them, one by one.
This is the Internet. Same thing goes for drugs. Give a guy a crack rock, and he'll OD to death. You have to feed them line by line to keep them addicted.


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## GraemeLion (Jul 7, 2009)

FrancisBlack said:


> Oh, I was more trying to find out if I was underestimating or overestimating myself by having a 2000-3000 words/day goal.
> 
> And I don't work that way. I'll do drafts of every chapters, then we'll revise them, translate them, and release them, one by one.
> This is the Internet. Same thing goes for drugs. Give a guy a crack rock, and he'll OD to death. You have to feed them line by line to keep them addicted.



I dunno.

I'm kind of a fan of books and the process.  Internet or no, you either have something quality or you don't.  If you don't, it doesn't matter whether it's a book or a chapter.     Granted, your method is nothing new.  Serials existed long before computers.  Some of the greatest books ever written were actually serialized in magazines you'd buy at the grocer.

I don't think 2000 to 3000 words a day is outlandish.  

But giving a guy a book is not giving him a crack rock.. seriously.. I think people can manage to restrain themselves.


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## M. LeRenard (Jul 8, 2009)

> Oh, I was more trying to find out if I was underestimating or overestimating myself by having a 2000-3000 words/day goal.


That sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me.  I feel accomplished if I get 500 in, and even that usually takes me at least an hour.  So for me this would be six hours of writing a day... no way I could ever do that much.
But I'm not nearly as motivated as a lot of other writers.  I've been writing this novel of mine for something like 5 or 6 years now, and it's only around 150,000 words or so (maybe less... I don't remember).  I'm slow, and I always do a lot of rewriting.  And then I'll get out of the mood for a piece and decide to work on something else for a while.  Sometimes it takes months for me to get back in the mood again, so I put off said project for that long.
Shorter pieces, obviously, are a little more natural in their completion times, but I've written stories that have taken anywhere from two hours to finish to two months, in both those extreme cases the word-lengths being about the same.  I'm just a little spastic, I think, when it comes to this sort of thing.
If you can push that many words a day, though, consistently, and keep your partner on the same production level, I would be impressed.  We'll just put it that way.  But you never know if you can do it until you give it a try.  Sometimes people are just a continuous fountain of words.


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## ScottyDM (Jul 8, 2009)

Not finishing is the biggest bugaboo of any aspiring writer. So before you count the months and years to completion of your magnum opus, try to finish one thing.

And as others have pointed out, you will have productive days and you will have crap days. Writing is not building widgets on some production line. You cannot control or predict your "production".

Beyond that is the fact that everyone is different. Some write a few thousand words in a day, some write 500. Some need multiple editing passes, some need only one. Some need to restructure their story after completing the first pass, some are awesomely intuitive with storytelling.

And you will need at least one editing pass. Funny how the distance of a few months between the time you set something down, and pick it up again later helps you see the flaws. So plan on putting each novel aside for six months or so before you come back to it for editing. Of course start writing the second while the first is still "fermenting".

Finally, serialized stories? Quite so. But they were often fully written and edited before they were sold to the magazine for serial publication. However it is usually not the case that all the books of a trilogy are completed before the first book is sold. Although if you have the patience for it, such a strategy would certainly improve the quality of the whole.

Anyway, don't worry about it, or rush out to invest in T-shirts just yet. Simply write. And the biggest boost to productivity is to have a set time each week (can be multiple days) when you write. Three-thousand words a day don't mean squat if you only write one day a month.

S-


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## Xadera (Jul 8, 2009)

When I'm really into the story, such that it's spilling from my consciousness, I can get about 4000 words (~7 pages) in maybe 4-5 hours. Then, of course, it would have spilled out so fast that it would be a complete mess and would need another 2 hours of revision the next day it so it flows much better. 

Now, that's at my best, with brainstorming coming the night before or that morning in the shower, so the ideas are very fresh and appealing. However, my writing isn't usually like that. First of all, after about 5-10 pages of straight writing (and if I'm lucky, 20 pages over 2 days), I tend to zone out for at least the next two weeks to a month afterwards. Hitting a hiccup in any of the concepts (i.e: "Oh crap! I have no idea how this is really going to work out!") can create a gap of somewhere between an hour to a few days before I can continue writing again. And after an extended period of time, if an idea had been festering in my mind for too long, I'll likely have no motivation to actually write it without some fresh inspiration that could take who knows how long to pop up. 

So all in all, your goals seem quite ambitious to me. Then again, I only write as a hobby, so you may be more physically and mentally fit for that sort of endurance. My stories are also rather short, being between 5-15 pages, so maybe the extended structuring will make the writing much smoother for you as well. And I have no idea how collaborating will affect time-frames, there's both possible positives and possible negative.


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 8, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> That sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me. I feel accomplished if I get 500 in, and even that usually takes me at least an hour. So for me this would be six hours of writing a day... no way I could ever do that much.
> But I'm not nearly as motivated as a lot of other writers. I've been writing this novel of mine for something like 5 or 6 years now, and it's only around 150,000 words or so (maybe less... I don't remember). I'm slow, and I always do a lot of rewriting. And then I'll get out of the mood for a piece and decide to work on something else for a while. Sometimes it takes months for me to get back in the mood again, so I put off said project for that long.


 That doesn't count, you write awesome stories, so the 500 words/day is entirely justified.


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## TakeWalker (Jul 8, 2009)

over 9000 hours in MS PaintLike what everyone else said, it depends. I have a tendency to start something, write a paragraph or two, and then file it away until, say, a writing meme makes me take a look at it and remember, "OHAY, I had a good idea here!"

Then there's my current episodic project, which has been ongoing for about two years now. My progress definitely does NOT justify that time frame. :|


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## Xipoid (Jul 8, 2009)

When I actually sit down to write, I tend to do the entire short story in one sitting. Maybe 1,000-1,500 an hour, which makes me feel very accomplished. Unfortunately, these spurts of writing are rare. Otherwise, I don't write. I can't stand to sit and stare at the cursor blinking asking me what I want to say next when I have no idea.


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## Utsukushii (Jul 8, 2009)

Xipoid said:


> Maybe 1,000-1,500 an hour, which makes me feel very accomplished.


 This. Only I submit what I write down. I have these spurts extremely often, which is why I have a bunch of scraps of nothings that could eventually all be combined into a bigger story. I generally write things in a severely varying setting, which makes the story fresh each time I go back to it. It allows me to write something new and exciting without overdoing it, and it allows me vent my feelings on the story and often change the entire flow of the plot. I often write on a whim. I've only stopped writing one story, and it was what I was going to call "Morning Glory". It was a great idea, it just didn't go anywhere.


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## VÃ¶lf (Jul 8, 2009)

Start a story, don't finish. Start another story, don't finish. It's a continuous cycle. Then once I've started a bunch, I go back and finish. Time can vary between stories though.


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## panzergulo (Jul 9, 2009)

FrancisBlack said:


> *How much time do you, other writers, spend when working on your projects?*



It depends. Anything from an hour to two-three months. Anything from hundred words per day (or even week) to thousand words per hour. I work with the pace of my inspiration. I use no quotas, I don't count words per day or hour... I write when I feel like it.

But, I never aim anything higher than amusing myself. As long as writing is fun for me, there is one person who enjoys my prose: me. For some reason my recipe works, as I have a couple of regular readers and quite a few random readers. Those who are truly aiming for exposure, publishing, popularity or whatever, might have rather different opinions about this... as seen in this thread. I guess there is a difference if you are writing as a hobby, or as a profession.


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## GraemeLion (Jul 9, 2009)

What's the phrase?  I write when I'm inspired.  And I demand that my body be inspired at 5AM every morning


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 9, 2009)

panzergulo said:


> It depends. Anything from an hour to two-three months. Anything from hundred words per day (or even week) to thousand words per hour. I work with the pace of my inspiration. I use no quotas, I don't count words per day or hour... I write when I feel like it.
> 
> But, I never aim anything higher than amusing myself. As long as writing is fun for me, there is one person who enjoys my prose: me. For some reason my recipe works, as I have a couple of regular readers and quite a few random readers. Those who are truly aiming for exposure, publishing, popularity or whatever, might have rather different opinions about this... as seen in this thread. I guess there is a difference if you are writing as a hobby, or as a profession.


 But I want to be a professional hobbyist


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## GraemeLion (Jul 9, 2009)

FrancisBlack said:


> But I want to be a professional hobbyist



A professional writer?

Well.. that's what people are after they come home from work.

There are ten or twenty Stephen Kings a generation.. at most.   Most everyone else you see in the bookstores makes money another way and writes in their free time


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jul 9, 2009)

redcard said:


> A professional writer?
> 
> Well.. that's what people are after they come home from work.
> 
> There are ten or twenty Stephen Kings a generation.. at most. Most everyone else you see in the bookstores makes money another way and writes in their free time


 Naaah. I've yet to see a furry Stephen King. (Brian Jacques was probably the closer we got)

Now, back on topic,
[Insert reply here]


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## Alex Cross (Jul 10, 2009)

It depends. For my current story series, Ninja Cat, it takes about a week per chapter, but I have plenty of chapters.


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## duroc (Jul 11, 2009)

It varies greatly, which seems to be the same for everyone else.  I have some projects that have been sitting around for more than ten years.  Some I've abandoned all together, but others I keep around because I think they have potential.  

Short stories can take anywhere from months to weeks, depending on their length, complexity, and whether I can focus my attention on them.  Sometimes, I might be driving in the car and I get one of those "Holy shit, that's a good idea" moments, and that'll help me belt one out rather quickly.  Deadlines tend to help speed things up, but as of late, my ability to concentrate and sustain any sort of continued production with my writing has been nonexistent.  And the muse ain't happy about it.  I have the scars to prove it.


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## Bladespark (Jul 11, 2009)

I write at three speeds.  

"I'm not really in the mood."  Times when I don't feel much like writing, but I do try to write at least a little bit anyhow.  I dribble out a hundred words a day or so at best.  This is where I'm at most of the time, going fairly slowly, taking months to finish short stories, letting my novels drag on for years and years...

"I could write."  This happens pretty often, and I can kick myself up to this level when I really have to, if I have a deadline for something, or am trying to write as a present to a friend, etc.  I write a few hundred words a day, and can finish a decent short story in just a week or two.

"ZOMG!"  Sometimes I get inspired.  I can't make myself do this.  The muse comes when it comes, but when it comes... I finished an 80,000 word novel in 8 days.  10k words a day, except it was actually a lot more, because one of those days I was away from the computer and couldn't do anything more than make plot notes and has out ideas, and another day I had family stuff and only got in a little writing time.  I wish this happened more often, but it's only turned up a handful of times in my entire life.


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## VÃ¶lf (Jul 11, 2009)

Bladespark said:


> I write at three speeds.
> 
> "I'm not really in the mood."  Times when I don't feel much like writing, but I do try to write at least a little bit anyhow.  I dribble out a hundred words a day or so at best.  This is where I'm at most of the time, going fairly slowly, taking months to finish short stories, letting my novels drag on for years and years...
> 
> ...



That entire thing sums me up pretty well. Of course it took me almost a year and a half to belt out a 150,000 word novel in comparison, and I only could write for an hour a day; it wasn't possible to get to my cpu any more than that. But I suppose it's better than some people one person took 10 years to get 90,000 words.

Usually I find myself at the middle statement, and go at the same pace.


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## gigglingHyena (Jul 11, 2009)

Depends on my mood, and whoever I'm roleplaying with. Don't write stories myself, but if my parter(s) keep up the pace, and my mood's right.. well.. there's no limit to how much I might end up typing. :>


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