Writing a book is no easy feat, any published author will tell you that. It requires dedication and extreme planning. Even the best authors like J.K Rowling can’t stress enough how planning, writing whenever you can, and having that burning passion to write is key to writing a book.
One question most first-time authors seek the answer to is how long does it take to write a book? This is a tricky question to answer, with many things playing a part. For example, it took J.K Rowling 6 years to write the first Harry Potter book but only one year to write the second.
If you want to know how long it takes the average first-time author to write a book, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll look at the numbers and tell you how you can get quicker at writing. Let’s get started!
How Long Does It Take First-Time Authors To Write A Book?
We’ll start by looking at the question that brought you to this post. How long it takes someone to write a book depends on a number of things. As a result of these varying factors, we can only answer the question by looking at the average. So let’s do just that!
On average, it can take anywhere between 6 to 12 months to write a book. Of course, how long the book is and how many words the author writes play a huge part in this. For example, if you were to write a 30,000 to 50,000-word book and you wrote 500 words, 3 days a week, it would take you up to 7 months.
On the other hand, if you wrote 500 words, 3 times a week and your book is 80,000 to 100,000 words long, it could take you 12 months to finish your book. The time it takes to write a book can change if you develop your skill set and plan your time better.
What Factors Affect How Long It Takes To Write A Book?
So, what are the main factors that affect how long it takes someone to write a book? Well, some of the key factors include the desired length of the book, the author’s experience level, and how much time the author has to write the book.
For obvious reasons, it will take an author less time to write a 50-word book as opposed to a 100-word book, no matter how experienced they are. When it comes to how important experience is, we can see how important it is from the example we gave you at the start of this guide.
Without prior experience, it took J.K Rowling 6 years to write her first book. It only took her a year to write the next one because she had more experience. As far as time to work on the book is concerned, this relates to how often the author can actually sit down and write.
If an author can dedicate more hours to writing, they will finish the book quicker. Take N.K. Jemisin as an example. It took her 8 months to write The Broken Kingdoms and she did it whilst working 55 hours a week. If she had more time to work on her book, she might have finished it sooner.
How Can You Write A Book Faster?
If you want to improve the speed at which it takes you to write a book, the next part of this guide is crucial for you. In this part of our guide, we’ve outlined 4 key ways you can write a book faster. Take each point we make into account if you want to write quicker.
Establish Your Deadline
An easy way you can increase your writing speed is by setting yourself strict deadlines before you start. Deadlines are designed to push you to complete a given task. Setting deadlines as an author will encourage you to keep writing. You could set both short and long-term deadlines to make sure you keep to your schedule.
It is important to set deadlines that are realistic. Do this by coming up with honest expectations. Don’t be afraid to reward yourself for hitting your deadlines either.
Set Yourself Word Count Goals
One of the best ways to speed up the writing process is to set daily, weekly, or monthly word count goals. Word count goals will help you set a pace you can stick to every day.
To do this, it is important to first understand how many words roughly your book will be. When you know this, you can work backward and figure out how much you need to write each day or week to reach your deadline.
Set Yourself Challenges
Sticking to the same routine every day can become boring quickly. This can then lead to demotivation that will reduce how fast you write. To avoid demotivation, set yourself challenges regularly. This will motivate you to keep writing. Simple challenges you could set yourself include an increased word count for the day, tighter deadlines, or a ban on distractions.
Prioritize Writing Into Tasks
Finally, prioritizing your writing is key to completing your book in good time. All the best authors are brilliant at prioritizing their work. Because there are so many factors that pull us away from writing, it is important that we prioritize everything perfectly.
You should establish a list of clear priorities and work on them in that order. By listing each priority, you’ll be able to work out how long a task might take and what you need to do to complete it. This will help you stay on track.
In Conclusion
In this post, we’ve shown you how long it takes to write a book. Whilst the length of time it takes changes depending on the length of the book, experience, and writing time, we’ve helped you establish that it takes anywhere from 6 to 12 months to write a book.
We also looked at steps you could take to speed up your writing process. With this information at your disposal, you should now be able to plan your writing process and understand how long it might take you to write your first book.
