Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Your writing speed

Good morning, all, and thank you for letting me vent yesterday. Now today, I'd like to hear from you, if you're feeling so inclined!

It's always interested me how some people can write the first draft of their MS in a matter of weeks, while some people take years. I don't think one way is better than the other, I just think it's a difference in the process. I like to sort of write the "first draft" in my head before I type it into the document, for example, so I'm not one of those uber-fast writers.

So I'd love to know: what's your writing speed? What's your record time for completing a story? And why do you think you work at the speed you do?

(And for the record, my quickest time is nine months from first chapter to final draft, and that was mostly because I wrote more than half of it within two months. I could probably go faster if I wrote full-time, but that's not exactly in the cards!)

2 comments:

  1. Well, I technically started OPEN EYES two years ago. I was at a summer camp and we did a mini nanowrimo where we had to write 10k in a week. I was the only one in the class who accomplished it, but I kind of let it sit afterwards. Last November, during the actual nanowrimo, I was reminded of my abandoned story and went back. But then I stopped as soon as the month was over. I wasn't taking it seriously.

    It wasn't until January that I started to approach it as something that had potential. And considering the overhaul I had to do on it (turning on book into two, adding characters and plot elements that weren't there before, etc.) it was like writing another book. I'm pretty sure I'm on my last revision right now.

    So either 27 months or 8, depending on what you're going to count as a 'first' draft ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOL. Tiff, good point about what "counts" as first draft. :) I usually write big chunks at a time and then languish when it gets to the plot-heavy parts (climax, ending) because the outlining in my head phase never turns out the way I expect. Hmm, maybe I should take a lesson from you, Becky, and slow down on the thinking/plotting portion of novel-drafting.

    ReplyDelete