How Many Hours A Day Do Writers Write?

Today I thought I’d address one of the common questions authors receive: “How many hours a day do you write?”

What do you think? Do authors spend eight hours a day writing as in most other professions? Or do they stay up all night burning the midnight oil? Or do they sit down and dash off chapters in no time flat? Before you read the following answers, make a guess in your own mind, or share in the comments (if you’re brave). Have your answer ready?

Now, here are responses from eight author-friends (and me):

D’Ann Mateer, Karen Witemeyer, Erica VetschHow Many Hours a Day Do You Write?

D’Ann Mateer:  Currently I’d say I write 2-4 hours a day.

Karen Witemeyer:  I have a full-time day job, so my writing time is very sporadic. In an ideal world, I’d love to write at least 2 hours a day (although “writing time” for me usually includes email checking, social media marketing, researching, etc. so it would be more like 4-6 hours a day if that is included). However, with the day job, I end up writing much less on weekdays, and write for about 8 hours on Saturday and 4 hours on Sunday to meet my goal of completing one chapter a week. Someday, when I retire from the day job, I hope to have a more regulated writing schedule, but for now it pretty much comes down to whenever I can find the time.

Erica Vetsch:  The true answer is—it depends. If I’m on a deadline of some kind, I can write from 4-6 hours a day. Mostly, I write from 2-4 hours on weekday afternoons. I do lots of other writing tasks like editing, marketing, blogging, etc, but for writing on the manuscript, I average about 3 hours per weekday. (Since I have about 10 days to finish this manuscript, I’ll write however long it takes!)

Julie Klassen, Michelle Griep, Robin Lee Hatcher

Julie Klassen:  It depends on how close the deadline is! I suppose I average two or three hours a day actually writing—except when a deadline is looming, then maybe six or eight hours. Other time is spent editing, marketing, researching, etc.

Michelle Griep:  Authors write a lot of words on many things other than their manuscript, but as for me, once I start a story, I put in a minimum of 4 hours every weekday.

Robin Lee Hatcher:  I usually write about four hours a day, M-F. That is my time for getting new words on paper. I’m a morning person, so I usually write then, and I leave afternoons for the “business of writing stuff” (editing, revising, marketing, bookkeeping, cover design, etc.).

Jody Hedlund, Becky Wade, Dani Pettrey

Jody Hedlund:  I don’t necessarily write a certain number of hours a day. Instead, I write a certain number of words. Sometimes my daily goal will take me 4 hours and some days 8! It just depends on how well the words flow (and how diligent I am!).

Becky Wade:  I tackle writing-related business in the mornings! It typically takes me anywhere from 1-3 hours to reply to email and address that day’s marketing To Do list (social media, blogging, interviews, e-mail newsletters, etc). Once I have that out of the way, I write.  The time it takes to write on any given day varies widely, because I write according to daily page count goals. For example, I’m currently rewriting 20 pages a day. If I hardly need to make any changes to those 20 pages, I can knock them out in an hour and a half. But much more often, I decide that the pages need heavy editing. So I add content or cut/paste content or change the motivation/conflict/emotional slant of a scene. That can take ages.  I’d say that, on average, I work at this job for 6-8 hours a day.  

Dani Pettrey:  I don’t write for a specific amount of time. Rather, I write to a word count of 2500 words a day during what I call “normal” writing. During the last month before deadline that amount increases quite a bit. I typically write 12 hours a day during that month as I’m trying to pull everything together and polish it. 

Reading through these replies again, the answers seem to range from: A. two to three hours, B. four hours, C. six to eight hours, and D. up to twelve hours.

Do any of these numbers surprise you? If you are a writer, where do you fall? Let us know in the comments. And thanks to all the authors who contributed to today’s post!