Getting Published: How Long Does It Take To Write A Book?

Believe it or not, I’ve been asked this. A lot.

And it all depends on how you work. I can only give you examples I know of. My friend Suzan’s last book took an immense amount of research before she could even figure out what the narrative line was going to be, so it was a year and a half – with months between research trips and other work – before she got past the first couple of chapters (one chapter had not even been entirely researched, but she had to have a sample to included with proposals). Then she came home from one of these research trips and the floodgates opened and she wrote five chapters in five days, leaving spaces here and there to fill in citations, etc., that she knew she had, but didn’t want to stop to deal with.

On the other hand, I wrote a memoir (no research necessary!) in just over a month. I wasn’t crazy about it, but it was feasible.

So ask yourself a couple of things:
1. Are you writing full time?
2. Have you done all the research?

If the answer to both of these is yes, I don’t see why you can’t have a draft chapter (15 to 20 pages) at the end of every day. You WILL go back to it, but this will help you figure out exactly how the scope of each chapter plays out, as you say, and help keeps it fresh for the next day.

So that would be about three weeks, give or take a Sunday off, to get the first draft out.

Then the reworking comes—give yourself another three weeks for that (which is generous). Reorganizing chapters, moving massive sections of one into another, plugging in various facts and figures. By then you should have recruited some friends and associates as readers so you can get some serious feedback on what’s missing, what’s extraneous, where you’re dragging, etc.
Then you rework it again—this reading and reworking part can take a few months, thanks to forces somewhat beyond your control.

For anyone here who says “holy crow – she thinks someone can write a book in six weeks!” please go back to numbers 1 and 2. Sometimes folks treat books like PhD dissertations: because they have the reputation of taking years to write, people take years to write them. But if you’re not distracted by a day job, kids, house chores, relationships, or–as Henry Miller was, searching under your desk for your pencil (as well as other assorted procrastinations), you can get the beginning, middle, and end down and looking pretty respectable in this much time.

I’ve written 14 books though I only plug a few of them, and of the 14, five were commissioned by clients/ghostwritten, two or three were on spec, six on advances, so I have a range of experience–but on the other hand, I haven’t written any blockbusters…so take what you like and leave the rest. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!