Can You Write A Book In A Week?

Yesterday, I was reading a very interesting post, that I was linked to from twitter, and it was very, very inspiring.

Most people think of writing a book as a very long-winded process that takes years to finish properly. Well, of course you do need to do more than one draft, and loads of revisions, but what’s to say that your first draft shouldn’t be written in a short amount of  time… is it even possible?

Well, David Robinson recently did just that: he wrote a book in a week. That’s ONE WEEK. Ok, it was only the first draft, but it’s still a book, right? In fact, he even reported daily on its progress on his blog here.

Interestingly, in another post of his he raises a valuable point for all writers. Unfortunately, I can’t find the post, otherwise I’d link you in, but it was about the amount of hours a writer puts into their writing daily. Funnily, a lot of writers who write ‘full-time’ seem to only put in half the amount of hours that a ‘proper’ full-time job would give. So, how can you expect to write a lot of books if you’re only putting in a few hours a day?

Of course, I hear you say that writing is a slow process made up of careful thought. It cannot be rushed! And many people will think that if you were to write a book in a week, it would be absolute trash. But remember, it is only a first draft.

Yes, I know, a week is a little ambitious. The first draft of my first YA book took me 4 months to write, but that was fitting it in around other commitments, and only doing it at the weekends, and the odd evening.

Typically, I aim to write 4000 words a day; that equates to 28,000 words a week. Meaning that if I were to write full time I could probably write a first draft in a month, give or take a few days. But is it really as easy as that? After all, writing something good takes effort and time. Well, when I say a month to write a book, as David Robinson pointed out in one of his posts at his blog, we really mean a month to type a book. After all, I have a detailed chapter-by-chapter plan that I spend months putting together first, before I start the bulk of writing a book. And it is, I believe, the ‘bulk’ of writing that puts people off and stops writers finishing work. After all, we know what will happen. We know the whole story inside out. We know everything… well, maybe not quite everything, but you get the idea.

But that’s the beauty of characters. As you write, characters will nearly always do the unexpected and throw a spanner into the works. And that’s exciting! Because not only will you likely end up writing a soloution and planning it at the same time, but you’re making a lot of progress with a book, making it more exciting for you, which of course means it will be more exciting for the readers (hopefully!).

So, will I write a book in a week? Well, probably not. I don’t have the time. I’d love to be a full-time author, and maybe the time will come when I can, but at the moment I tend to set myself 4 months in which to complete write the first draft, and the subsequent drafts each of 2 months to write them.

So, there you have it! And congratulations to David, who really did write a book in a week.