Would you rather write one great book, or three good ones?

Long title, but I've been thinking about some of the great books I've been reading lately, or looking forward to reading soon. A lot of these books are first books, where the author had years to polish and revise, or they have been from authors who took a solid year, or even more to get the book to where they are happy with it.

I just finished the Cecilia Grant book and it's exactly how Molly described it, surprising, fun, beautifully written and very different from any other historical on the market. The same with Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races, it's go gorgeous that it's intimidating to other writers out there, and so beautifully crafted, and I've skimmed her blog to find out how long it took her to write it, but can't find out and don't have the time to do any more research, but it reads like it took her three years to write it.

Joanne Bourne takes a year to write a book, Sherry Thomas takes almost as much time and I feel like their books really show this. And they have the luxury of time. I know a lot of authors that need to write more than one book a year, more than two really, especially in romance, where advances are low and building a readership means three books a year on the shelves.

And some authors write amazing books in three months, and I'm intensely jealous of them. A lot though, write competent books in three months. And a lot of readers are probably thrilled with competent. As writers, we get excited about the books that surprise us, give us something new and unexpected, something impeccably crafted. Books that get a lot of buzz in the writing community. Buzz that can push a book's sales, or not.

We all know of authors that were intensely admired by writers and bloggers, who never hit a list.

Or do we just learn to write better in less time?