Well, I had an interesting thought today while making glaze for some donuts...

This is a forum just brimming with authors who have written literally thousands of words. The thought I had was how fast does it take to actually get a set number of words typed and edited for posting. I fear with me putting my own numbers up this will become a 'whose is bigger' contest, but I am truly curious to the size...erm length...I mean how long it takes to get a chapter up.

For myself the current average word count I strive for per chapter is 10,000. The rough-draft can take days, but usually only takes 3-4 hours to type. I then carefully read over it, which takes roughly an hour and half. My wife betas it over the course of several days to a week, a process I think that takes her two hours. Then I edit the changes...another hour. Finally, I give it another read through which is about an hour. Then I post.

So all together it takes me about eight hours per 10,000 words. This is an average since my chapters have been, of recent, around 12,000. Personally, I think eight hours spent on that many words is a reasonably amount of time, which boggles me because eight hours of a person's schedule, say every month, doesn't seem like much.

Based on the above I usually have no understanding when an author says they didn't have the time. I equate that to mean they didn't feel like finding the time. Oh well.

So, if anyone out there cares, or dares, to compare...please place your stats below for my hungry perusal. (I know that last statement is lame.)

--byl, out.

 

The actual writing isn't the problem. It's keeping the story straight and keeping my characters and scenes within the preset themes/directions/characterizations of the story.

Of course, this can be mitigated by extensive planning, but I would quickly lose interest with a story if I had already 'written' it down somewhere and was just transcribing it into full form.

When writing oneshots though, I often get struck with the entire story and race to put it down on Word before I lose interest/the finer details. In these scenarios, I can put down 1500 words an hour easily. My relatively high typing speed helps (110+ wpm).

 

I have a tendency to write and edit at the same time, which is why I tend to turn out fairly clean copy. However, that means that it takes me longer to write. And lately, my progress has been nil. I have files open, but I haven't written a word in them. It's hard to write with a twelve-month-old baby in your lap who is trying to press keys. Even before I got the baby, I still wrote in fits and starts. 1500 words a day was good for me, more than that was excellent. I also refuse to use outlines, so I sometimes have to go back to reread things to make sure I've kept everything straight. My main problem, I think, is connecting the dots. I have large chunks of story written out in my head, but the material in between can be a stumbling block. Like it is now. I've been stuck in the same place for months. I hope to have some baby-free time starting a week from today, but we'll have to see how much I can write in that week. My brother is taking his wife and my niece on vacation for a week, so I don't have her during the day...

 

When all is said and done, maybe an hour per 200 words. Getting a single sentence out is hard work, because it never seems perfect. Like Bratling, I edit as I write, which means that for any one sentence in the finished product, that sentence has been written and re-written over and over.

So yeah, for me typing speed has nothing to do with it, because thinking time over each sentence is much longer than the time it takes to type it.

 

Same as Taure. I'm never sure how to phrase something, and never quite happy with the endresult, so I change a lot while writing. Keeps me from writing, really.

 

I've become like that, too. I used to be able to write straight through most of a scene before I'd go back, reread and make edits. Now I can barely make it through two, three paragraphs before I have to go back and fix things.

My writing speed is... not glacial, but it takes a bit for me to get into the swing of things. Partly why it's taking me awhile to update.

My best is around nine thousand words in around ten or so hours, including breaks for neccessities. I have no idea of an average.

 

It's very interesting to read about everyones' thoughts on the matter.

A reply to Amerision...I hate having everything planned to every detail then writing it out because I too become bored with it.

I realize that sometimes spur of the moment inspirations as I'm writing can lead the story down an entirely new and different path than originally planned. My first story came out awesome due to this. To balance it I have a rough idea of what I want to accomplish in the overall, and leave enough unknown in between to let me use my imagination.

Wow...reading everyone else's I feel sympathy for you guys. I'm not being an arrogant prick when I say that...or this next part. When I sit down to type I usually have no troubles with what my mind thinks and what comes out on the screen. It just seems to flow from my mind to my fingers. The only times I run into trouble are when I am tired or mentally out of it.

I thought that's how everyone else did it as well, but now reading the above statements I definitely have a newer perspective on why it sometimes takes people so long to write and post.

--byl, out.

 

I write my fastest when I'm tired mentally(not that I write often). It means I don't spare extra thought to reading what I type, and I like it more than when I rewrite every sentence to fit with the theme. Even if I do rewrite every sentence, I go back and reread it anyway to check for anything I could do to make it better. A massive waste of time is what writing is for me.

 

I'm with Taure, World and Bratling and so on. As with those, it also keeps me from writing. I'm never happy with what I write, and if I was to ever write a large piece, it would take me far too long, and I don't care about writing anywhere near enough.

 

An hour for 2,000 words or so. I do my thinking and conceptualizing separate from the actual writing itself, I have most of my sentences memorized when I begin typing.

 

It often takes me about four hours to churn out 1,000 words because I re-write everything about ten times. Then of course once its all written I have to go back and re-write it all again. ^_^

 

I have no creative writing skills, but when I'm writing essays or papers I'm like the others above in that I edit while I write and often end up rewriting a sentence 3+ times, or even changing or rewriting an entire paragraph.

 

When I start rewriting sentences 4-5 time, it never seems right. If I rewrite a sentence too many, it seems stale no matter what I do to it. I will rewrite certain sentences upon editing, but I usually let a sentence stay until I edit, so I don't look at a certain part for too long.

Kind of similar to repeating a word so many times that it just doesn't seem like a word anymore.

As for writing, I really don't know, because I multitask a lot while I write. I could get a couple pages off in one go, or a sentence before doing something else. and then, upon editing I usually add more or take stuff out.