Now comes the arduous editing process.

But remember Dean has only done that once or twice and he did it after he knew his writing abilities.

I don't think I could do one in 15 days even with Red Bull. I donÕt know how long HockingÕs novel was and I have done two 50,000 novels in a month apiece but that is fast.

But as in DeanÕs case I think I would try if a real publisher was to offer me even $10,000 to do it. He got more than that. I would have to take time off from work but I think it might be worth it.

Some of my favorite newer writers take a year to do one novel. Of course they have jobs and one is also in a band. Evidently some writers etc., think it should take a year or longer to do a novel but IÕm not one of them.

Right now I have done two 80,000 plus words novels and eighty to ninety percent of another novel in one year along with a few short stories. One of the finished novels was a 50,000 word novel I wrote this last Nov. I went back and added around thirty thousand words to it.

I think it all depends on the writer, motivation and how much time they have to write. Some seem to be able to crank them out very quickly and other writers take years.

It took me a year to write my first novel, but I did not write daily. In fact, I wrote the final quarter of the novel about this time last year during a three week period of vacation/medical leave (I found writing kept my mind occupied). At my most prolific, I can write ~5000 words per day--if that is all I do (I did so yesterday).

But as I've said, in other circumsatnces , it is not quantity but quality that actually matters.

If your starting from scratch its hard to imagine anyone just pulling names and cities out of thin air with no research and it all meshing into something coherent but I guess it could be done.

I guess if your cybernetic implants tapped directly into a world wide data farm that stored all the ancient spells, alien races, unknown worlds, cosmic philosophies, and backwards physics you could dare dream of, and then somehow twist it around into a whole knew imagining of the subject, and you already had all the necessary skills of a writer downloaded into your matrix... I imagine you could do a descent book in six days.

But as a scifi/fantasy writer I can 'Imagine' anything

W.

Don't get me wrong, I think his series is one of the best ever written. But I find it kind of hard to trust him after a six-year gap halfway through, and how clear he's made it that it's a very low priority for him. Why should I invest my interest into a series when the author isn't going to have the decency to actually keep going on it?

I wouldn't ship those out, but if my writing skills improved, I think a novel a month is doable if you don't have to tinker with the drafts a great deal.

But you could be right about how much time someone spends on revisions etc..

Mostly it's me...I'm a five-hundred-words-a-day writer right now, and---

500 (words) x 365 (days in a year) = 182,500 words

---which is more than enough for a novel.

Except...I don't write every day, and my last effort, day-in-August to day-in-August, only made it just past one hundred thousand words before dying on me.

That's not to say such genre writing doesn't take skill and creativity, in a way it requires more to create a standout story. But her readers and editors are looking for a story that fits within a number of restrictions, and since she's a pro who understands the formula, she can concentrate her attention on the things that would make the story seem fresh to her readers while not violating their expectations.

The thing that takes a long time isn't churning out word count. It's revision -- particularly revision to make things logical and consistent. If your hero blows his big chance at the end of Act 2, you have to spend Act 1 making that plausible and significant to the reader. That's the kind of thing that has you ripping out and replacing early scenes four or five or ten times until things work.

But... Imagine you are working on an English country house murder. The key creative ingredient in the story is the stratagem the perpetrator uses to establish an apparently ironclad alibi. That's *hard*; but it's not a lot of work. It requires an inspiration. Everything else is drafted to specification with enough craft that it doesn't show unless the reader has his literary critic hat on.

I'm 15k into a novel, finished a 16k word novella, and have been using 750words.com for 28 days. I'm in love. I clearly needed some kind of structure/goal for my writing to get my butt in chair.

I guess that's OK if you have stories in the bank. Always working one year ahead. Otherwise just wait as long as you can.

But some people revise, at least partially, as they write and some pros don't really do revisions. Some do five or more. That would probably take few months.

I’ve learned this over the years (after completing eight novels), and I’ve also come to the conclusion putting more time in the front-end results in a better novel. Yes, I outline, complete with a chronology, cast of characters (including bios) before I start on the novel. At this point, I can put a lot of words down in a short time. Yet the first draft is nowhere close to the final version, for it has to go through a workshop or critique to catch all those items to which I’m blind.

There are those writers who ‘crank out’ novels and it shows on close reading. I prefer those authors who truly care about their stories.

quote:

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Remember the first rule of writing... Write!

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Absolutely. The reason I posted this topic in the first place was that I was shocked how quick a couple of authors could churn out novels. My ideas take longer to formulate, so writing a novel in a period of two weeks would never happen. But the thing they definitely did to achieve the quick schedule was to write. Whether one spends every waking hour writing or a couple hours a day, persistence definitely pays off.

Yes, eight novels completed, with another underway plus a memoir. However, keep in mind that this is over a twenty-year plus period, which works out to be over two years per novel. When I look back at my first novel (since rewritten several times), I cringe, it was terrible - there was so much I did not know about the craft of writing. I’ve since come to appreciate the comment (I forget who made it) that writing - like many things in life – is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. During that time, I've also read widely - especially outside the SF genre and observed the craft employed by great writers. And I still have a lot to learn.

Another saying is that you need to write a million words before you are ready to write your first novel. I’m well over that mark and I’ve learned a thing or two along the way. Rushing a novel may work for a few, but for most it just doesn’t.

So, do we count the time spent thinking about the novel as writing it?

I imagine Patterson doesn't take very long either, but he has notes galore to choose from. He's always "writing" something.

The amateur photographer asks, "how many shots did it take for you to get that picture?"

The professional photographer asks, "did you get it?"