My comments on how long it takes to write a book.

My views about writing:

I just read a post from one of my favorite writers. She has one of the best stories around with an awesome list of characters. Her blog was an answer as to why it takes so long to write a book. She wrote a perfectly grand answer.

I run along the same lines as her. The hardest part is just writing the book in the first place. The next is all the changes that the book goes through while revising, editing and correcting. Then all the other stuff, like marketing, and the cover, etc…

One thing she did say is she writes every day 10 to 50 pages. I have to say, I don’t get to write every day. I have a full time job that takes a lot of my time and my home, cats and my other life. However I do take at least 3 days a week and I make time for writing. In between those days I plot and develop the characters. How they feel, what they are doing. Every idea I get I put into my ideas book and type up what I can about the idea. I than categorize all the ideas into which book I want to put the idea into.

In doing the back stories of my characters, people don’t realize how much back story goes into each character. If there are 14 characters, large and small, each character has their own motivations for things. Each has their own way of thinking, feeling, beliefs, and also how their body moves with quirks. All of this takes time. The amount of paper I have just on the characters back story is astounding.

I did finally submerge my subplots into the manuscript and the word count is over 60,000. I still have a lot to do in order to make the story as good as I possibly can. If it is not good to me, then I will work on it until I can bring you the best story.

A lot of work goes into designing of a world which includes government, a people, how they live and what happened to cause them to live like that. Then there is the future and how to fix it.

Hopefully you will get an idea as to the work involved in developing a book. To be able to read a book in one night is a wonderful thing. Just keep in mind the amount of work that went into it.

Just some comments regarding those that support me.
My favorite banker, Brandon, when I first told him about my ideas of my book wanted to read some of my work. I brought him some pages and he loved them. At that point he was pushing me to finish the book.

“Get it done” he would tell me.

So after finishing the first two chapters I bought them for him to read. I had some questions for him to answer and everything.

I waited 3 weeks and each time I asked him if he liked them and had any ideas for me. His response was, “I haven’t read them yet.

At that point I had already done 2 more chapters and needed those questions answered. So I asked for the chapters back. He reluctantly gave them back, but since then he has not asked me about the book at all, even though I have been diligently working to finish it and to also learn how to write it.

I think he was disappointed that I took the chapters back. But I was disappointed in him for not reading them in the first place. After weeks he still hasn’t read the chapters, give me a break. He was the one that was pushing me to finish the book and then wouldn’t read them. (Strange).

Can you imagine my disappointment in his actions?

He wasn’t or isn’t the only one who I cannot depend on to help me with my book.
Further disappointment was/is my best friend, who also is a writer. When I first talked to her about writing a book and discussing my ideas, I cannot describe what happened because I am not sure myself.

I wrote my first 4 chapters and asked her to be my editor, because of her background in literature. She read two chapters and said she liked them and wanted to read more. But when I talked to her about my ideas of my platform, Facebook, Myspace and Blogging she began to argue with me. I couldn’t understand, this is my book I should be able to do what I wished as far as how I work my career. This difference of how to approach writing book and becoming published almost started an argument, and destroyed our friendship.

My friend is of the old school where the writer writes a book, then submits her printed out manuscript to an agent. The agent loves the work and then you are published.

I spent many months researching how the writing and book publishing field works. In all my research I found the times have changed. The days of printing out your manuscript in full and mailing it out to agent is gone.

With the digital age things were/are different. It is important that a writer start a platform to become known to readers and have a small readership before you talk to an agent. Let’s face it, if a writer has a readership before the book hits the shelves it looks better to the agent and will make a better impression for future sells. It is a win/win situation for the readers waiting for the book, the writer and the agent. I have tried to explain this to her but she is very persistent in her views and will not discuss my book or what I am learning in my writing process, which hurts me a great deal. I am saddened by the whole event.

I can hear a few of you thinking that maybe we should not be friends any longer, and to that I can say it is true. But I have know her for 10 years and for whatever her reasons are for not supporting me on my book, I am still going to write it anyway. I refuse to allow anyone to stop me for being what I want to be, which is a good writer and a great story teller.

Maybe my friend believes she is correct in her view on how to get published and thinks I am silly for what I am doing. I can only hope that she and I will overcome this as we have other differences we share in the past.

What do you think? Me and others would love to know. Share you ideas, on this or anything else you want to discuss. We can help each other by sharing. We can learn by reading how other have faced adversity and overcome them.
Share, love, laugh, cry, grow and bond with other women. We deserve it. Until next time.