Springing off of last week Wednesday's post about inspiration, today is about how long it takes to write a book. This is one the Top questions I get asked.
Oy Vey. This one is both straight forward, and difficult to explain.
The best answer I can give is this: The time it takes to write the story is inversely controlled by how much time you have taken in preparing for the writing.
Confused? Me too.
I have found that the more work at setting up the novel: doing research, character sketches, imagining the places and scenes, even doing scene cards for plotting, the faster the actual writing time takes. Mostly I do this much intense prep for my fantasy novels, which I can write in 30 days during NaNoWriMo. As a control, I wrote a romance at the same time. For this book all I had were names, a general location, and an idea. That's it. I even had to make up characters, and places, and plot devices while writing. (This one, after a year, was still unfinished, and took a lot of work to get it into shape)
For me, the more time I spend prepping, the less time I need to spend writing a first draft. NOW this does not include re-writes, edits, and beta reading. Just the time it takes to sit down and write a rough draft.
To do the proper amount of prepping before writing, the time varies for everyone. But once you have done this, it is much easier to "see" and get into your story. Once this is happening consistently, you will find that the words just tumble over your mind and onto the keyboard without you having to force them.
If you have a well thought out idea, it won't stay shoved up inside your mind, it will beg to be released onto the page.
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