After more than ten years of writing, I have collected a great deal of data while writing books to figure out how long it takes to finish a book. So, how long does it take to finish writing a book? The honest answer, it depends. Chances are you aren’t going to write it in a day, a week, or even a month. The first thing you need to figure out is how fast a writer you are. Once you know how long it takes you to write 1,000 words, the math to figure out the rest is rather easy.
While writing my book Child of Havoc, I tracked my time during the entire writing process. Here are the numbers:
- Total time spent (hours): 113:14:01
- Final word count: 136,440
Keeping track of my time and the words I wrote helped me figure out that my average word per minute (WPM) was 26.18. That is about 1570 words per hour. My lowest days were around 20 words a minute, and my highest was 39. But, looking at the data, my average was really consistent. Remember, just because you can type fast doesn’t mean you write fiction fast. You have to think about the story, put that into words, and that can be a very hard thing to do. My typing speed was not at all reflective of my actual writing speed.
It is also worth noting that the average reading speed is 200 to 300 words per minute. Because we read so much faster than we can write, it can make the arduous process of writing seem that much harder. I had to teach myself to be patient with my progress and to show up every day. It was a little bit of effort, day after day, for several months that finally resulted in a finished book.
The Formula: TW / WPH = HI
When I set out to write Child of Havoc, I wanted the book to be 120,000 words long. I used the following TW / WPH = HI to calculate the time it would take me to write the first draft:
120,000 (Total Words) / 1500 (WPH) = 80 hours
Now that I did the math and knew that it would take me 80 hours to write the first draft, I decided I would write for at least one hour every day. As a result, it would take me 80 days to finish the first draft.
You can take this formula and easily calculate an estimate for the amount of time it will take you to write your novel. If you really want to know how long it is going to take you to write a book, track your time for a few days. Figure out your WPM and do some simple math. Depending on how long your book is going to be, you should be able to figure out how many hours it’s going to take to finish. However, that math will only help you project the time it will take you to finish the first draft. If you do any editing, that’s additional time you will have to spend working on your book.
As a result of tracking my time, I have gained significant insights into how much time I need to spend in the chair every day writing if I want to get my next book done by my self imposed deadline.
On top of this, I wanted to know how long it would take me to write a book from start to finish. That includes my original drafting time, editing time, and book formatting time. Here is a complete breakdown of my time by stage and the things I learned.
Time to complete first completed draft: 76:18:17
First drafts are always hard. Child of Havoc is the third book in The Ballad of Sorrows trilogy. Being the final book in a series made it an even more unique challenge. I had a hard time writing the beginning and spent several months trying to figure out the first four chapters. After a short break to edit another project, I started over to do a full draft without skipping a single day. Here is a breakdown of the time I spent working on the first draft.
Partial Draft: (Prologue through chapter 4)
- Days written: 52 days
- Average words per day: 556
- Total words: 128,343
- Time spent: 15:40:57
First Full Draft:
- Days written: 86 days
- Average words per day: 1,446
- Total words: 128,343
- Time spent: 60:37:20
In total, it took me 76:18:17 hours to complete the first full draft of the book.
Time to complete revisions: 31:01:53
After I finish a first draft, I send it off to several beta readers to get feedback. Once my readers have finished the book and I have spoken with them about the story, I go through and start my revisions. This is done chapter by chapter. I copy the old chapter into a new document, read through it, adding, removing, expanding, etc., until I am finished. Depending on the chapter, there are more edits required than others. For this book, the structure was solid, and I didn’t need to cut or delete scenes. My focus was on refining descriptions and revisiting dialogue. Thanks to my readers, I knew what people didn’t like and how I could revisit those scenes to make them work better. This is my favorite part about writing, and this is where the book I set out to write appears. Depending on the book, I have to write many drafts. Because I did some extensive outlining on this book to prepare, I was able to cut down on revisions. When I outline less, I tend to have to do more drafts to get things right. Here is a breakdown of what it took to finish the second draft.
Second Draft:
- Days written: 27 days
- Average time spent per day: 1:08:58
- Total words: 136,495
- Time spent: 107:20:10
Time to implement copy edits and format the book: 5:53:51
After my editor has reviewed the manuscript, I spend time implementing the fixes and reading through the book to check to make sure errors are corrected. Copy editing is an important part of getting a book ready for publishing, and there have been projects that took much longer to fix. On occasion, a copy edit will come back, and I will realize more work needs to be done on top of correcting spelling and grammar. That wasn’t the case with this book, but it is a fair warning to anyone who might be going through that stage for the first time.
Final Draft:
- Days written: 13 days
- Average time spent per day: 0:27:13
- Total words: 136,440
- Time spent: 113:14:01
Total time to complete book: 113:14:01
By the time I had finished and published my book, I had spent at least 113:14:01 hours working on it over the course of a year.
My second book in that same series, Child of Rot, took me longer to write, even though it was shorter. Child of Rot took me 128:08:57 hours to complete and is 114,467 words long. By tracking the time on two projects in a row, I got a much better idea of how long it takes me to write a book.
Since finishing these books, I stopped tracking my time. I still track my word count as part of my daily writing goals, but I am not as concerned about how long it takes me, as far as hours are concerned. I have found that setting a daily word count minimum works better for me than setting a specific amount of time I should work. This is because I tend to stress out more when I have a timer running. This might not be a problem for you, but you may find it difficult to write while a timer is running. My current daily word count minimum is 2,000 words. That means I will spend at least 1:15:00 hours writing every day. Sometimes I write faster and sometimes I write slower. Still, it just about evens out to my usual average.
How to finish a book fast?
If you want to finish your book faster, spend more time writing. The hardest part is staying in the chair and remaining focused on your work. I realized that I tend to be more focused early in the morning. So, I changed my routine. I started to wake up at 6:00 am to write for at least an hour before I got ready and went to work. After I got used to this change, I started to write for two hours every morning before work and significantly increased the amount of writing I got done every day. The great part about this was that I could go about my entire day without needing to worry about finding time to write. More often than not, I would find myself with extra energy and a greater desire to write just a little bit more in the evenings.
Find what works for you. It’s not really about writing faster and trying to get more done in that single hour of work. It’s really about finding more hours to spend time at your desk writing. And sometimes, you don’t have more hours. When that is the case, showing up every day is what is most important. But if you want to be a writer, you have to write. I spent too many years daydreaming about writing without putting in the work. That never got me anywhere. Now that I have learned how to write and do so every day, I am finally starting to make the progress I want to.
I hope that this short glimpse into my experience writing Child of Havoc was insightful to you and that it provides you with something that will help you go and create. If you are interested in following my work, reading more posts, and getting the occasional essay in your inbox, sign up for my newsletter. Thanks for reading.
