Welcome back. Get a cup of coffee and get comfortable. Here are today's answers to that pressing question above. One of our guest authors today is from the Five Star Authors list. Welcome, Jim Ingraham.Kate Douglas
Kate is the author of the Wolf Tales series. You can find out more about her books on her website of her other sites: http://www.myspace.com/katedouglas_wolftales and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KateDouglas/.
I write two novels and two novellas a year for my Wolf Tales series, although I did three and three the first two years of my contract.
It takes me about eight weeks to write a novel (80,000 words) and four to six weeks for a novella (30,000 words), but I spend a lot more time thinking about the story before I actually sit down to write. And, of course, all those wonderful thoughts go right out the window when I’m actually into the story!
Of course, along with the actual writing, you have to remember time for any revisions, plus the copy edits and page proofs, not to mention promotion. Writing is often the easiest part of this job!
Michele Ann Young is the author of The Lady Flees Her Lord, to be published by Sourcebooks in October 2008.
I think "depends" is right. For me I think about six months for a romance, for my end of it, would be about how long it takes. By that I mean, for me to feel happy with the story and before sending it to my agent or editor.
The Lady Flees Her Lord, coming out in October, certainly took around that length of time. I could definitely take longer, but that would be all on the self-editing side, you know, fussing. Getting the plot down and the characters set and getting to the end seems to work well at the sixth month mark.
I am, of course, hoping that as time goes on I will get faster.
Jim Ingraham
Jim is the author of Remains To Be Seen, published July 18, 2008, by Five Star.
I spent more than ten years writing my novel Remains To Be Seen, published July 18, 2008. I took time off every once in a while to write short stories for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Total writing days on the book were probably six years. Another novel, Sahara Dust, took about three years. My novel A Capacity for Evil took about two years.
Tune in tomorrow!
I think I want to finish this book in under 6 years! But if I have to put it aside to work on something else, or for Real Life... that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteIf I ever cleaned up my first novel and tried to publish *thinks* it's already been ten years since I wrote it. To edit it and do the necessary rewrites would take even longer.