How long should it take before you query?

[Megan]

How much time should you spend on drafting and editing the book before you query it? Like how much time should be between you getting the first words on the page and querying the book after draft 5 or whatever?

[J.R.]

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer to this question because people write and edit at different speeds. I've seen people query with essentially a first draft, and I've seen people spend years honing their craft before querying a novel. It also can depend greatly on the type of novel. A contemporary romance novel usually won't require much research and will often follow a fairly standardized plot, whereas a historical fiction novel could take years just to research, and a high fantasy novel requires the author to create an entire world.

I'd say you're ready to query when you have a polished draft that you feel like you can't improve upon. Since you generally only get one chance to query a particular novel, you want to take your best shot.

[Kenny]

I second what Jen said. There is no specific time period. This will depend on you, how fast you write your first draft, how polished your first draft is, how many beta reader rounds you plan on going through/the book requires, and how much editing it needs, and this will not only depend on you as a writer, but also the book you're writing, like Jen said above.

Basically, your book is ready to query once you have gone through all the necessary steps to polish and edit it and you feel satisfied with it to the point where you don't think you can do anything more to improve it.

It took me two weeks to write the first draft of my YA contemporary (it ended at 90k+ words). I was writing daily and my average word count was 7k per day, sometimes more sometimes less. This isn't a standard. This will differ from one writer to the other, and from one book to the other. I'm working on another novel rn and it's taking me much longer to get through the first draft, for example. I had 3 rounds of beta readers and 5 rounds of editing total before I started querying it, and then even after I started the querying process, I still ended up having to make some edits to the first pages to make sure they were more "catchy" etc... and even more recently I decided to switch POV from third person to first person.

My only advice here is to not query with your first draft, no matter how polished you think your first draft is. Make sure you edit and edit and edit, and get beta readers to point out issues that you can't find yourself, and then edit again using their feedback. Don't worry about how much time it takes you Whether it's two months or a year, that doesn't matter.

Some writers find it useful to take a break from their book after writing their first draft before they start editing, so that they can go through it with "fresher" eyes and make it easier to spot plot holes and any other issues they need to fix. Others jump into the editing immediately after the first draft because they wanna stay "in the zone." There is no one way to write a book. There is only the way that works for you. And this goes for how long it will take to write a book. It'll take however long it'll take and however long you need.

The agents won't care about how long it took you to write your book and start querying. They'll care that you're querying them with the best version of your book that you can write, and I cannot emphasize this more.

[V.M.]

Excellent advice from Kenny. However, I don't think many writers will ever think their book is perfect. I would say listen to your beta readers and your critique partners.
I know there are things I change (or want to change) every time I go through a book. You have to make a decision at some point as to whether your changes are making your writing or story better or if they are simply tweaking.

[Megan]

J.R. wrote: "I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer to this question because people write and edit at different speeds. I've seen people query with essentially a first draft, and I've seen people spen..."

Thank you for the advice! I really appreciate it.

[Megan]

Kenny wrote: "I second what Jen said. There is no specific time period. This will depend on you, how fast you write your first draft, how polished your first draft is, how many beta reader rounds you plan on goi..."

Thank you for the advice! You guys are probably right. I'm just overthinking it or something.

[Megan]

V.M. wrote: "Excellent advice from Kenny. However, I don't think many writers will ever think their book is perfect. I would say listen to your beta readers and your critique partners.
I know there are things I..."

That's a good point. Thanks for the advice!

[Kenny]

Just to clarify, I agree that most writers, myself included, never think their books are perfect. What I meant is to edit your book the best you can, to the point where you don't think you can do any more work to improve it until you get an agent and an editor. It just has to be your *best* work, not your perfect work.

[Wmba]

It depends on you and how fast you can write well. Clearly you want to have the best you can do before you actually query. And do understand that how well you can do is limited by various things including your experience, and at some point you can not make it better by making changes aka 'improvements' but only make it different.

So when you have hit your personal best then send off the query. Be sure to query exactly like your target has requested that it be done.

A better question might be how to speed up your personal writing process.

I learned early on that pantsing a novel would not work for me. I later learned that pantsing short essays and op-eds did work better for me.

We all have a different point between pantsing and planning depending on the length of item we are writing. And we all have a different amount of planning that works best for us.