How long does it take to write a book?
The amount of time it will take you to write your book depends, broadly, on two things: • How clear you are on what you want to write about. • How much research you have to do, as opposed to writing about something you already know about in great detail. Research takes a long time. The late W Richard Stevens (my hero) wrote TCP/IP Illustrated (Volume 1, The Protocols). This has which has about 600 pages. Stevens said it took him about an hour per page, so 600 pages would take about 75 8-hour days, or 15 normal working weeks. When I wrote Practical TCP/IP which has about 800 pages, it took about 3 hours per page, giving a total of about 300 8-hour days, or 60 weeks.
“Angela’s Ashes really took 30 years to write,” said author Frank McCourt. In the late 1990s, that book was on bestseller lists for more than two years, sold more than 2.3 million copies, went to more than 64 printings. On the other hand, Michael Angelo Avallone wrote a complete novel in 36 hours. Once, while dining in a New York restaurant, he wrote a 1,500-word short story in 20 minutes. All told, he wrote some 1,000 works, including 36 mysteries. One of the authors of books for the Frommer Travel Guides says it takes her three months to write one of those books. A writer of a young adult novel of 32 chapters told me she wrote it in two weeks. Barbara Shafferman, author of the highly-rated New Age thriller, President’s Astrologer, took a year and a half to write it. How long it will take you to write a book depends partly on how MUCH you write a day. “My goal is 2,000 words a day”—about 8 pages, says Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha. Gustav Flaubert wrote Madam Bovary o
There are people that start with the idea of what they want to write and are pretty disciplined on a regular basis pursuing that objective of creating their manuscript for their book. We have people that have written and assembled their manuscript in several months. We also have people who have worked on a book for ten years depending on their work ethic and commitment, depending on the subject of the book and ancillary materials that go with it.
So, I don't know that there is a clear, crisp answer. It's really like every book is a work of art and it's different from every other book out there. There maybe common themes, but the content of the book is different based on the writer. So, for some people it has taken a couple of months, for many people it has taken ten years and for some people after they start; the book never gets done.
