Maybe I should have called this post with “How long does it take to write a blog?” Three months, apparently, as it’s been that long since my last post! Well, obviously, it hasn’t really taken me three months to write this. I just haven’t been giving it any thought, to be honest.
Not that I haven’t been working. I continue to edit Novel 6 – that never-ending process that goes on and on and on. I’ve lost count of how many drafts it is on now – at least three, possibly more like four. At the last read-through, I began to think that I might be close to the point where I don’t want to make any more changes. I am really pleased with the main body of the novel, and after relentless work on the first three chapters, I am almost satisfied with them. Almost… Just yesterday, more ideas were creeping in, whispering in my ear that shifting the focus in Chapter 2 would be a better way to impart all the necessary exposition that still seems to be weighing down the action. It was a great idea, but it would mean a significant amount of rewriting and tinkering with the structure of the first three chapters, and honestly, the thought was a bit depressing. It’s now two years since I made the announcement that Novel 6 was finished, but here I am, still adapting and editing. And it has made me think – how long does it take to write a novel?
The answer, obviously, is that every novel is different, and that they all take as long as is necessary. And what exactly counts in calculating the time taken? Does it begin from the very first moment an idea was jotted down? Obviously not, but for me, once an idea is written down, it has already come to life. Characters begin to take shape, back story builds quietly in the background, and then scenes and incidents start creeping into the spotlight. Patchworking, I call it; writing random scenes and backstory that may or may not make it into the novel. All this is essential work, but I don’t count it as writing the novel – especially as this can go on while I am actually writing something else.
Maybe the starting point is when all these patches begin to accumulate into linear chapters. But even this is not an easy moment to pinpoint. There have been occasions where the ideas came together with a bang and the writing process took off very swiftly. For example, with my bookshop novel Have You Got that Book…? I first wrote down the idea in my notebook in April 1998 and had such a rush of ideas that I started work on it almost immediately. But other times, it can be decidedly straggly, with the process of gathering ideas being slow and distracted. Seeds of ideas take time to germinate, and there can be false starts; the first chapters are often the most difficult to write, slowing things down even more. But then at some point, I realise that I’ve got beyond that tricky stage and the chapters are starting to flow. Only then do I feel like I am writing a novel.
If we take that as the start point, it becomes quite easy to count the months between starting and finishing the first draft. I say months, because it is usually a process that takes multiple months. Sometimes, that multiplies into years. I was working on the first draft of The Most Beloved Boy for at least four years, but it is a very long novel, and this was when my time for writing was limited due to the pressures of raising young children. But it doesn’t always take this long. By the time I came to write The Hawthorn Bride, my children were more independent and I was able to use the bonus of lock-down to bang out the first draft in four months.
But as I have said many times before, a first draft is far from being a finished novel. Usually, as soon as I finish a first draft, I want to go back and start rewriting it. Experience has taught me that this stage of the process can take even longer than writing the first draft. And that is how it should be – all those months on the second, third, fourth drafts are what turns the work into something worth reading. At this stage, the hardest thing is accepting when to stop editing. I can’t reread any of my work without seeing something I would change. Technically, I do have that chance and have used it, even going back to re-edit my work published on KDP. Once a book is actually in print as a physical book, it becomes a lot harder to make significant changes. But I’m sure all writers could quite happily take a red pen to a paperback version of their novel and tweak what is supposed to be the finished product.
So, coming back to my original question – how long does it take to write a novel? I could probably work out how long it took for each of my novels to make it from idea to KDP, but for now, let’s just look at Novel 6. I first wrote down an outline for the novel in May 2019 – the document on my computer shows the date it was created. Between then and 2022, I was at the patch-working stage, trying out different scenes and developing the characters. From March 2022, I have an even better record of the progress, thanks to this blog. That was the first mention of it, when I wrote about trying my hand at Young Adult fiction, though I very clearly say that I haven’t started the novel yet. By August of that year, another post mentions that I am five chapters in, but not really feeling like it has got going. The next mention is January 2023, when I write about having made rapid progress throughout the autumn until getting stuck at Chapter 21. And then on 28th February 2023, I very proudly announced that the first draft was finished. So that makes it about twelve months to produce the first draft. I then left it to rest for a while but was back to planning and writing the second draft by the summer. Another post in September 2023 details the very intense plan I had to complete a second draft by March 2024. I did achieve that, but I almost instantly started rewriting again and carried on with that throughout the year and into 2025. Which brings us to now, making the time spent editing about 24 months. So, to sum up: 3 years of planning (while working on other projects), 1 year writing the first draft, and 2 years of editing – six years, give or take.
Six years, and who knows how much longer. I really did hope I had reached an end, but that new idea just won’t go away. What I need is another project. A new novel? There are ideas, but they are embryonic at the moment, needing considerable research before anything could be written. I should get back to submitting – I have started to think about how to pitch Novel 6 to agents, as I am convinced it has more commercial appeal than anything else I have written, and I am excited for it to be read. That would certainly keep me occupied, but it is nowhere near as fun or rewarding as the actual writing process, so I’m putting it off. And I have started something else, a project I mooted once before but am only just starting now – writing short stories. I once thought I could keep myself busy by writing one a month, seeing as I already have the ideas. So far this year, I have written two!
However, there’s that idea that keeps niggling at me. I could at least just try it out before I put Novel 6 to bed for a while.
M J Schofield 