How long it took 30 writers to finish their famous novels

[Sea-shore]

How Long It Took 30 Writers to Finish Their Famous Novels

Three months for Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. Yes, I have read it and can believe it.

Les Miserables took 12 years, and Gone with the Wind 10 years. It does show in the work. Masterpieces.

Personally, I'd like to finish my book a little sooner than that.

 

[Boopadoo]

I'm feeling a little better that I will have taken six years to finish mine if my final edits are done by the end of this month.

 

[James Marinero]

I started my first in 2004 and finished in 2010. I took a few years off in between.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

My first was almost seven years from start to finish, but the others have been much more rapid. Six weeks to completed first draft is my best time (But then there are months of revisions, of course).

 

[Paul Whybrow]

My latest psychological thriller, the third in a series, took four months of creative writing. It was preceded by two months of research and cobbling together a basic plot and profiles of the main characters. I edited the WIP four times a week as it grew, and am doing a final (hah!) edit now. That will take another week, by which time the 80,000-word story will be as tight as I can make it.

I should say, that writing is all I really do, as I don't have any distractions like employment, family or pets. Some days I'll work for a solid ten hours, others only a couple, but I'm always 'on' thinking about the WIP, making notes about it and researching. I don't worry about the daily word count, not even checking it: some days it's maybe 500 words, others 2,000.

I deliberately set the new story in a remote rural location, where CCTV isn't prevalent, as the two previous novels were weighed down with the technological surveillance that happens in town; this freed me to write a tale that was more about human relationships. This helped the narrative flow.

Although I'm pleased that I'm becoming more proficient at the process of writing, I wouldn't want it to become so slick that it was mere work to me. At the moment, it's a real joy to write a novel, but would I feel the same way while churning out the twentieth in my series of Cornish detective stories?

Someone, for whom writing came automatically, was Barbara Cartland. I've mentioned her before, in an old thread, but her output is worth remembering. She wrote a total of 723 novels, including 23 titles in 1983 alone!

Makes everyone else look lazy...

 

[James Marinero]

Someone, for whom writing came automatically, was Barbara Cartland. I've mentioned her before, in an old thread, but her output is worth remembering. She wrote a total of 723 novels, including 23 titles in 1983 alone!

Makes everyone else look lazy...

I believe that she used dictation for many. I couldn't do that, I need to see the words, besides avoiding plot, story and repetition issues. that's why I'll never make their grade.

 

[KG Christopher]

I finished my first draft of Pet Food in 2 months, then 4 months for the second draft, and now, after a 6 month 'sitting on it', probably 1 month for the final draft. so looking at 1 year from 1st to end of 3rd draft.

 

[Carol Rose]

I think it's really elitist, not to mention poor logic, to assume the longer it takes someone to write a book, the better written it will be in the end. I know some people who have been working on the same book for years and it still sucks because they simply cannot write, and no amount of time will make them into a writer. The talent isn't there. I also know people who can write a novel in a month and it's a wonderfully written story that pulls me right in. Time can't make the book great if the talent isn't there to begin with.

 

[Patricia D]

I think it's really elitist, not to mention poor logic, to assume the longer it takes someone to write a book, the better written it will be in the end. I know some people who have been working on the same book for years and it still sucks because they simply cannot write, and no amount of time will make them into a writer. The talent isn't there. I also know people who can write a novel in a month and it's a wonderfully written story that pulls me right in. Time can't make the book great if the talent isn't there to begin with.

Robert Randisi is an over-the-top example of a fast writer who is a fabulous story teller. He spoke at this year's Killer Nashville and if I remember correctly, his top output was 24 books in one year--under various pen names. He also spends almost every waking moment writing. Kevin O'Brien and Janet Evanovich also spoke at KN and also write quickly - but not as quickly as Randisi.

I, on the other hand, took years of off and on writing to complete my first book and at least a year to complete each of the next three. I'm hoping to speed it up a little on the one I'm just beginning.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Not to mention that we all have other things going on in our lives--7 years to write my first novel because I was also running two businesses at the same time. Now that I have 6 hours a day to write, they go much faster--but it doesn't mean they're better or worse.

 

[Sea-shore]

I think it's really elitist, not to mention poor logic, to assume the longer it takes someone to write a book, the better written it will be in the end. I know some people who have been working on the same book for years and it still sucks because they simply cannot write, and no amount of time will make them into a writer. The talent isn't there. I also know people who can write a novel in a month and it's a wonderfully written story that pulls me right in. Time can't make the book great if the talent isn't there to begin with.

I definitely agree that talent needs to be there, to begin with. Actually, I liked Stephanie Meyer's writing and she certainly did pull me right into the Twilight world (also I am awed by her perfectly readable first drafts ), but the plotting and pacing was a little off the mark, in my opinion, but could have been better had she given it more time.

With the lengthier books mentioned, the complexity/number of characters/story arcs/ world-building etc ( not to mention the word count ), I think, needed the years it took the writers to write the books. Lord of the Rings in 3 months?!

 

[Carol Rose]

Certainly a higher word count is going to increase the time it takes to write a book. I was speaking in general terms only when I said I don't believe that the longer it takes to write a book, the "better" that book is.

 

[Emurelda]

The more I aspire to churn out many books the slower I get. I get lost in the dream and lose sight of the book I have at hand to finish to the best of my ability. It's been long for me not because I'm writing high quality but because I've not kept consistently writing. So this length of writing logic doesn't apply to my likes unfortunately. Ok back to writing now...

 

[Carol Rose]

But that's what I mean. A person can take 20 years to write a book because they write 15 words a day, every day, for those twenty years. Or, because they write like a mad man for a few weeks, then let the manuscript sit for four months before returning to it for a few more weeks. Or, because they have an incredible skill set to begin with, and they take that much time to craft the prose, plot the story, and fully develop the characters. Or, everything in between those three scenarios. There are too many variables not accounted for.

Length of time alone doesn't take into account anything else. Saying it took me 10 years to write a book doesn't necessarily mean I wrote every single day, with a consistent word count, for ten years. It's nothing more than a measure of time, without any details of how much talent I had to begin with, how much I understood the basics of plotting and character development, how many words I wrote each day, whether I even wrote each day, and how much time was spent going back and self-editing.

Concluding that if a person took more time with a particular book, it would have better plotting, character development, etc. isn't necessary true, because that person might have written the book in the best way they know how to. More time wouldn't give them those skills if they don't understand what's missing in the book in the first place.

Taken by itself, those three months, four years, ten years, twenty years, means NOTHING. And that's why I don't care for blog posts like that one. They're misleading, and the information isn't really useful. I can't stack up those amounts of time against how long it takes me to write an average book and say "See there? So-and-so takes this long and so do I, so that must mean my books are as bad/good as theirs!" There's no real correlation because there are too many variables not accounted for, including a skill set, or lack of, to begin with.