BookSweetie asked Nancy Springer:

I wish I had dozens more to read. I'm interested in how long it takes you to get a good first draft done -- and if you find yourself having to do a lot or a little rewriting? Also, did the first in the series take longer to write than the subsequent books? Did any of the books "write themselves" much more quickly or more slowly than the others?

Nancy Springer Kristine, after writing fifty books, I don't take more than a few months to do a first draft, and I take pains to nail it as close to a final draft as I can; the less rewriting the better.
As for specifics about the Enola Holmes series, I don't remember exactly how long it took to write any of them, and I guess I'd rather not know. They were challenging and sometimes enormously painful, rather like childbirth, and my recollection is quite blurry. None of them "wrote themselves" yet they all wrote themselves because that's the way I write. What made them difficult was parameters: 1888 London, dark, three plots (finding missing person, seeking Mom, evading Sherlock), feminist, show Sherlock how it's done, and a new code or cipher in each one. !!! Plus all that research. Insane!!
But now I'm ready to try again....

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