Writing Days

BY THE MAD GENII, FYNBOSSPRESS, WRITING: CRAFT

Writing Days

May 17, 2026

2–3 minutes

When I first started writing with serious intent, I didn’t focus on getting the story finished so much as I focused on getting writing done. This worked, and stories followed. The more I wrote, the better I got.

Then I finished a book in (roughly) a calendar month. This was a great thing, and a terrible thing… because the first time it happened, I immediately moved the goalposts to “I did it once, I should be able to repeat that on command.” That’s not the way skill-building works, and so I stumbled and fell flat on my face until I’d learned my lesson.

Then I finished a second book in thirty writing days. (No, it wasn’t the next book, or even the third one.) By this point, I was keeping track of what I was writing by putting stickers up on the wall calendar for the days I’d successfully written something… and I noticed that I can write a book in 30-90 writing days. (The last book was actually 82 writing days.)

The problem is that they’re not consecutive days.

The faster I write, the more of the book I cover – the slower I write, the fewer words or progress comes. But that’s not saying writing every day would always make more progress: some of the slowdowns come from research, and/or tackling a hard part of the book. Some came from getting sick, or surgery, and there was no creativity going to come with that.

What determines a 30-day book vs. an 82 day book? Well, for one, the 30-day books tend to be shorter, and I tend to have already done a large chunk of worldbuilding already. (Sometimes that’s in stories you see, sometimes that’s in prior snippets that never went anywhere.) The longer writing times tend to be for longer books, with more characters (and therefore more character arcs) and I’m having to worldbuild as I go. The shorter ones also tend to be in times of lighter workload from Day Job, and usually periods of relatively good health in the household.

All that said, I know better than to expect that I can sit down and demand my brain write This Exact Story, in This Exact Timeframe. Maybe I’ll get there in another five or six books… and maybe I won’t. I’ll be a different person, with a different skill level, by then.

How many writing days does it take for you to finish a story, and what affects that for you?

9 responses to “Writing Days”

Karen Myers

May 17, 2026 at 7:46 am

I can’t write under too much stress — financial, tasks, health. Those have to be reduced to at least the dull roar level, and sometimes that goes on for months.

Now, if I had a general factotum and an employee or two… sigh… I could write for days on end, and would prefer to. Since it’s all long form for me, by preference, the immersion is seductive.

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KAries

May 17, 2026 at 12:49 pm

Well, I know I can finish a book in 15 days. But I also know this last book has taken me more than a year…but still not more than 60 actual writing days. Coming as it did as I was clawing my way out of very serious burnout, I’m satisfied with it.

My longest book took me 75 days, and I quit my day job in the middle of it. Those were mostly consecutive days and it has been noted by savvy readers that there is time line tom foolery in it. To which I say “shh, spoilers”. Now, I just need to find my notes 4 years later to remember how I was going to resolve it…

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Zsuzsa

May 17, 2026 at 3:13 pm

About the ideal writing time for me is 30 days, or sometimes a tiny bit longer, which is why NaNo used to work so well for me. Although that isn’t “30 days from the first conception of the idea to the end.” There’s a lot of prep work that goes into those 30 days, figuring out exactly what the idea is, getting the high points of the plot, and writing an outline that the characters more-or-less agree to. And then I can start putting words on paper at a pretty good clip.

After I do that, though, I need to rest, both from that specific book and from writing projects in general. It’s usually a month off before I pick up the manuscript again.

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jaglionpress

May 17, 2026 at 5:09 pm

I have done a draft in 30 consecutive days, mostly for Nano, but it always seemed to need a lot of reworking afterwards.

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1. TXRed
  
  May 17, 2026 at 7:40 pm
  
  My first NANO I got the draft in 28 days. It needed that long to revise, improve, and redo. I have no idea what the day count for the WIP is, because Life and other things, plus a protagonist who prefers not to communicate with mere authors, have slowed things.
  
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  1. jaglionpress
    
    May 18, 2026 at 11:58 am
    
    The “slow path” I started evolving around 2017-2018 translated to around 50K a year, with a lot of pausing and rethinking before writing again. It picked quite a bit late last year, but alot of that was having exercise time I needed to fill with rowing.
    
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    1. jaglionpress
      
      May 18, 2026 at 11:58 am
      
      And dictation
      
      Reply
Mary Catelli

May 17, 2026 at 7:47 pm

The length of time to write tends to go up geometrically with the length of the work.

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1. BobtheRegisterredFool
  
  May 18, 2026 at 12:43 pm
  
  This feels plausible to me.
  
  With the caveat, that I would absolutely expect some me specific factors, with my current skill level, and how I store and access stuff in my own memory mattering.
  
  Reply