How Long Does it Take to Write a Novel?

It takes as long as it takes.

Hard to believe that I've been working on Deciphering Zach for eight years. It started out with a different title, and a plot that barely resembles the story as I now see it. In all that time, though I've piled up tons of notes and questions to be answered, I've written only one chapter. I've never felt, until recently, that I knew how the novel should be structured. Nor did I feel that I really knew the two central characters: Zach and Harte. Now I'm close enough to solving those problems that I can move ahead and let the two boys reveal themselves fully. 

Even though I know them better than I did at the start, I don't know everything about them. If I did, all I'd be doing is dictating, not creating. No one ever knows anyone completely, and that's just as true for writers as it is for anyone else. What's important is the discovery, which can take a lifetime, if you are lucky enough to be granted such a long relationship. 

Backing the lives of the two boys is my original idea: dystopias aren't always obvious, and what seems to be an ideal way of life, as in the town of Burgundy, can be a quiet sort of dystopia.

X-posted from DreamWidth

Comments

  1. The answer to your question seems to be 'forever' for me. I started NETHERWORLD as soon as I finished PURGATORY, and here we are, five years later (two of which were basically lost to moving), and only half finished. The first took fifteen, so I shouldn't be surprised.

    It takes as long as it takes, because I can't write faster. The pandemic has made it harder, and the political stuff can bring me to a standstill. But getting older doesn't help, and too much time goes to keeping me able to write.

    I'm glad you're writing - it sounds as if the answers are starting to coalesce from the void.

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    Replies
    1. I'm not-writing much more than I'm writing, these days. Aside from the general anxiety and anger over our current state of the state, I am, like you,struggling with physical disability, as my health slides inexorably downhill. But I'm not ready to give up yet.

      Delete
    2. It's all we can keep doing.

      You've said it perfectly: I'm not ready to give up yet, either. As long as I have some good times - during which the brain seems to return as if it had never gone, I will keep on keeping on.

      What else am I going to do with my time?

      Delete
  2. "What else am I going to do with my time?" Exactly.

    ReplyDelete

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