Anyone who has ever daydreamed about writing a novel might be interested to know how much time it takes to get the job done. No two writers are the same, and some books get written faster than others. Kerouac’s On the Road, for example, was done and dusted in about three weeks. That’s one end of the scale. At the other we have people like George RR Martin, who’s been working on the last book of A Song of Ice and Fire for roughly fourteen years. (No pressure, George.)
I just finished a novel, and I wound up somewhere on the lower end of that scale.
As per my recent cover reveal, Book Two in my fantasy series The Wandering Knife is all done and wrapped up. I began writing The Riven Crown on May 1, 2021 and finished it on March 30, 2024. Which means in real time it took me two years and eleven months to write.
The Riven Crown is, by a comfortable margin, the longest thing I’ve ever written. It’s a bona-fide chunky fantasy tome at more than 140,000 words. To get the job done took a commitment of time and effort. To be honest, I’m happy the book was finished in less than three years. There were some moments when I thought it would never be done!
But how long exactly did it take me to write my novel? How much time in the chair? How much time staring at that same word document?
34090 minutes is the answer.
Or to put it another way, 568 hours.
That’s almost 24 full days of my life, or 71 full work days.
That’s a very specific answer, and you might wonder how I know this. Whenever I sit down to write, I start a stopwatch. I have a spreadsheet in which I log how many minutes I spend writing. I do this to keep up momentum, and also to track what times of year I am able to get more work done.
I’m not sure if spreadsheets often elicit much emotion, but when I look over my spreadsheet of time spent writing, I feel a mixture of pride and dread. Pride because I’ve stuck to the task of writing over many (many) sessions, and have got the job done. Writing this novel was a huge investment of time. I could have learned a language or an instrument in that time. I could have learned important life skills like how to tile a bathroom. I could have spent more time with my family. Though I would probably use that time to talk about the fantasy novel I’d like to write one day.
And I feel dread because I need to do it all over again.
The fantasy series is not over. This is not a two-parter. It will be at least three books long, and probably more. The journey of the Wandering Knife will continue for some time yet.
I took a short break from writing after I finished up The Riven Crown, but I’m back at it. About a week ago I started Book Three of the series, and I’ve already logged about ten hours of writing. The little cells in my excel document are filling up again. Maybe I’ll get this novel done a little faster, and maybe I won’t. Something I learned from writing my last novel is that it’ll take as long as it takes. I’ll get there in the end. One minute at a time.
To paraphrase the saying, the spreadsheet goes ever on and on.