J.N. Tomczak asked Elise Kova:

Hey, Elise. So I was wondering how long it takes you to write the first draft of any story, without the editing, unless, of course, you do that as you go?

Elise Kova I do not edit as I go. The first draft is purely black on white. The ONLY editing I do is if I need to get back into a moment or a scene and I need to read a chapter before to refresh where I left off and I notice glaring errors that I fix. But even then, I try not to focus on editing and keep my attentions on the overall story.

For just drafting, it takes me about 7 weeks to complete a manuscript around 100,000 words. A little bit faster or slower depending on if I have a bunch of time to focus or if I'm splitting my attention across a number of things going on (releases, other books, travel, etc...).

However, in this 7 weeks I'm not including other pre-drafting prep. I begin planning my worlds a year in advance (if not more) of actually writing them. Then, before I draft I spend about 3-7 days working on an outline where I break down the book into chapters and have paragraph summaries of each chapter. So by the time I sit down to draft I know the world and the story I want to tell very well.

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