Recently when I’ve spoken to people about being an author, one of the first questions that comes up is “So how long does it actually take to write a book?”
This question sounds simple, but it seems to imply that an author will one day think “I’ll write a book about x topic” and then sit down at their computer and write it out, from start to finish, until (theoretically) a few months later they will type ‘the end’ and that’s that.
Ha! If ONLY!!
While every author is different, and will have a different writing process, here I’m going to break down some of the actual challenges and processes that it takes to turn an idea into a manuscript worthy of publishing.
First of all there’s the IDEA STAGE. The idea stage can last weeks, months, or (usually) years. This is the time when an obscure but seemingly genius idea takes hold in your mind and you can’t stop thinking about it. It could be something as simple as a great title for a book. It could be a particularly kick-ass scene that you just keep playing over in your mind. It could be a character, or set of characters, who keep reappearing in your imagination. It could be a setting, or time period, that you can’t stop thinking about. Whatever that idea is, chances are you’ve written it down somewhere, on a piece of scrap paper, an email to yourself, or in your ideas notebook (every writer will have one of these).
Next comes IDEA DEVELOPMENT. This happens once you’ve decided that you definitely want to turn that awesome idea into a book. This is the point when that singular idea now gets its own notebook, or its own pile of scrap bits of paper. You realise that while your singular idea is amazing, it’s not enough for a whole book. Now you need to flesh out other important things like primary plotline and subplots – what else will happen in this book? How will it begin and how will it end? Plus who else is going to make up my cast of characters? And how realistic, actually, is that setting I’ve come up with? What are the rules of my world? IDEA DEVELOPMENT stage can again last weeks, months or even years, depending on how much attention you’re paying to this one idea. If this is the very next book you plan to start writing, then IDEA DEVELOPMENT can happen pretty quickly. But for me, IDEA DEVELOPMENT burns away for months, or sometimes years, while I’m working on other projects. That’s why I have a whole lot of notebooks on the go, all dedicated to different future book ideas. Every time I think of something else to include in a particular future book, I write it down.
The next phase of writing is the FIRST DRAFT. This is probably the part where a lot of writers differ, so I’ll just go with what I usually end up doing. My first drafts begin with me writing about eight or so chapters of the book, and then getting stuck (this usually takes about 2-3 weeks). This is the point where I realise I didn’t do any solid PLANNING.
Now we properly commence PLANNING, which really should have been done during IDEA DEVELOPMENT stage, but I find can’t really happen until after I’ve begun the FIRST DRAFT. Why? Because those first few chapters allow me to get a feel for the style of writing I want to use. It allows me to introduce myself to the characters and find out what’s working and what’s not. When I re-read those first few chapters, I start to visualise the book and the direction it needs to take so much clearer.
So here comes PLANNING. In the PLANNING stage I write out a full chapter-by-chapter outline of the book. Yes, this PLAN might change later, but this is where I try to get all the key plot points in at the right places, and work out if the character arcs are going to work. PLANNING takes about a week, but I should note that it usually takes a couple of weeks of ‘thinking time’ where I need to let the ideas sit at the back of my mind for a while. So let’s say that between the FIRST DRAFT and PLANNING phase, it’s about 2-3 months total.
Now we’re up to FIRST DRAFT 2.0 and this is where the bulk of the writing happens. I’ll rewrite those first few chapters I did, and then push on, now with my awesome chapter PLAN in hand. FIRST DRAFT 2.0 takes around 5-8 weeks to complete with solid effort. I’m talking NaNoWriMo style discipline. You need to be hitting your word count targets every single day (or every single writing day you’ve allocated). This is, without a doubt, where the hard work kicks in. Day after day you have to ‘show up’, even though you’re not actually accountable to anyone or anything other than the dream/goal you’ve set for yourself. You have to show up in front of your computer and force your brain to not think about anything other than the story you’re currently working on. You can’t allow yourself to think about your upcoming birthday/wedding/Christmas/baby shower. You can’t let yourself go off on tangents and work on your blog (ha!) or website or social media accounts instead. You can’t let yourself get distracted by anything. If you need help with concentration then I highly recommend reading Deep Work by Cal Newport
Once you’ve finished FIRST DRAFT 2.0 it’s time for a celebration and a teeny break to allow your fried brain cells to recover. When you’re ready, it’s time for SECOND DRAFT. To commence SECOND DRAFT, you’ll first start with a readthrough of FIRST DRAFT 2.0 and make copious notes and scribbles all over it as you work out how to salvage it. Because newsflash: if you didn’t already realise, FIRST DRAFT 2.0 will be a pile of crap. This is normal. If it isn’t crap … well, you probably don’t need to read this.
SECOND DRAFT is where you kick that manuscript into shape. You work out where the flaky bits are that you need to research more. You go back to those crappy scenes you abandoned half-way through and work out how to fix and finish them. You cut scenes. You note where to add scenes. You shift scenes around. And then you commence a proper SECOND DRAFT write through, where you use your notes to go all the way through and fix that manuscript. This, for me, takes at least a month, more likely two.
The next part of the process will vary for writers and will depend on how good your manuscript is now looking. I find the quality of the manuscript correlates to just how well I created my PLAN all those months ago. The looser the plan was, the worse the manuscript will be. So now you will undertake X DRAFT, where X could be any number from three to twenty (or more). Basically you will repeat the process of SECOND DRAFT over and over again until you’re confident that all the plotlines make sense and have been wrapped up with nice little bows, your main characters all have arcs and journeys, the book is entertaining, and basically you are happy and confident that you have made the book the best damn book it can possibly be. This process can take months or even years, but theoretically with each draft the workload should lessen, as you are now just tweaking and glossing the story instead of changing it drastically. I’m finding with my latest book, that I will probably end up doing a THIRD and FOURTH draft, but then I’ll be ready to move on to the NEXT STEP.
Once you’re finished making your manuscript as shiny and fabulous as you can, you’re ready for the NEXT STEP and this is probably where we can say we’ve hit the end of the original question of “How long does it take to write a book”. Because now your manuscript is theoretically worthy of being published into a book and what happens next will depend on what you want to do with it.
1. If you want to try and get it traditionally published you could:
a. Enter it into manuscript competitions with reputed publishers
b. Submit it to agents or publishers directly (if they are accepting submissions)
c. Pay for a professional structural editor if you think it’s still not good enough for a. or b. above. Then do a. or b. above.
d. Have writing friends read it as beta readers or to offer a critique (be wary here – this will be someone’s opinion and can often do more harm than good!)
2. If you want to self-publish it:
a. Pay for a professional structural editor to assess it if you think it still needs more work.
b. Get friends to beta read it to make sure you haven’t missed any glaringly obvious plot problems or accidentally offended a billion people with certain comments.
c. Self Publish! This involves many more steps including paying for professional line editing and cover design, but that’s not the topic of this post! To learn more about how to self-publish a book, check out these other posts I've written: How to Find Book Editors and Cover Designers in Australia, How to Typeset a Book and Publishing Checklist for First Time Authors in Australia.
And there we have it! I’m sorry I can’t give an actual number to the question ‘how long does it take to write a book’, however if you put your own time periods on the above steps you’ll have an answer. Once I hit FIRST DRAFT 2.0 stage through to NEXT STEP I find it’s about 4-5 months, though if we go from FIRST DRAFT stage it’s more like 7-9 months. And if we include IDEA DEVELOPMENT then we’re looking at 1+ years.
Ideally as I write more books this time will lesson, and I’d love to get to the point of being able to finish two books a year (or more!). Remember, one of the worst maladies a writer can catch is Comparisonitis, so if you’re working on a book, then don’t worry about what anyone else can do – just keep moving forwards!
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash