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How long to write your first book?
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I started with the complete plot. It took me about 16 months to come up with manuscript ready for editing. It took few more months to launch in Kindle Scout. About 2 years in total.
Safa wrote: "@is it necessary to take very long editing process?'It takes time because it's a slow process. The worst thing you can do is rush things or do things in a hurry. There's a lot of nonsense about publishing only taking a moment. There's a nice song in the musical 'Hello Dolly!' about 'it only takes a moment,' The rest is hype.
Roxanne wrote: "I started writing in 2001. It was finished in 2011." Then came the editing and such. It wasn't ready for pubbing until 2013.
My first novel took about 8 years, simply because I was working 60+ hours a week for much of that time! The second was finished (outline through 4th and final version) in about 18 months. I've been working on my third for 3 months now and am about halfway through the first version. I seem to be getting faster, though I must say I quit my day job 3 years ago to raise my son. Instead of writing at night, I write during his naps.
2 years for the first draft from the point of committing to write the novel, 4 months for the second draft, 3 months for the third draft and a further 3 months of going backwards and forwards on amends, editing and formatting, with the final final stage done in a nine day flurry of activity.Book 2, thankfully, is already moving faster.
My first novel took only eight months to write. It took me a further few years to get the courage up to self publish.Each book takes longer to write - my last one took nearly four years. What's the bet the next will take a decade?
Safa wrote: "@is it necessary to take very long editing process?"Editing is absolutely essential. Very few of us can write perfect prose. Our brains fill in blank spots and gloss over misspellings. If I start a book and find grammatical or spelling errors or typos it makes me think the author has no respect for their reader and that is a turn off. Editing can be expensive or take a lot of time but readable prose that doesn't leave the reader scratching their heads and wondering what the author was thinking is just one of several things critical to a book's success.
I started my first novel in 1957 and have still not completed it. My first published novel took about ten years; and my second one two years. I love to write but time and knowledge about the publishing journey were obstacles. I am now retired, am more knowledgeable about publishing so am able to write for the pure pleasure of it.
Took about a year, I think, to write the first draft, and then I cut a lot of stuff out and rewrote parts. After that it sat for months, as I had a feeling the plot didn't work, and then I spent another 6 or 8 months completely rewriting it with a new plot, a lot of new characters, and so on.Much better now. :)
I wrote the first draft of my first novel in about a month when I was twenty-three. If I ever need a reminder of what kind of freewheeling lunatic I was at that age, I just go back and look at the first line of that book: "First the writing, then the hunger. Yikes!What eventually became my published novel I wrote in 2009, tinkered with it for a few years while I wrote other stuff, and then I finally kicked my own ass into gear and put it out the door in 2014. There are about a dozen other trunk novels that will probably never see the light of day.
Karen wrote: "I started my first novel in 1957 and have still not completed it. My first published novel took about ten years; and my second one two years. I love to write but time and knowledge about the publis..."Do you ever go back and look at the novel you started in 1957? Care to share what it was about?
It took me a month to write my first novel. It was for NanoWriMo 2003.
I started my first novel in 2012 and finished in 2014.
You have to edit it enough that others can read it. I know when I write a first draft, it's almost as bad as gibberish until I take the time to clear it up.