When I start a new novel, I say to myself, “I wonder where this is going?” When I finish a new novel, I say to myself, “So that’s where that was going!” But when I’m about where I am now on this current project (somewhere around the halfway point) I say to myself “Cheese and Crackers writing a novel is a lot of work!”

But is it, really? Is writing a novel “a lot of work?”

To answer this question, I tried think of something that I could feel in my bones was a whole lot of work, then compare that to writing a novel, to get some idea of how much work it really was. What I thought of was carving a credible likeness of a person out of a chunk of marble. No question in my mind that that would be a whole lot of work. A mess-o-work, for sure.

Extensive research (i.e., reading a Wikipedia article) indicated it took Michelangelo about two years to carve his David—two years for Michelangelo to turn one hefty chunk of marble into Dave the Giant Killer. (Dave is seventeen feet tall and weighs north of six tons, btw.) It's true someone had apparently started on a leg before Michelangelo got the job, but if anything, that probably only made things harder for Michelangelo. In my software developer days, I'd sometimes get a project where my boss would say "Alice got started on a leg but then she left for a better job with Mickey D's, so I'm giving this project to you, and you're already a 'leg up' on it! Aren't you lucky?"

Nope. the last thing you want is a project that's a big block of stone with one crappy leg sticking out of it.

Anyway . . . it takes me about a year to write a novel, and I “chip away” (forgive me) at it pretty steadily during that time. I’m not saying I’m a Michelangelo artistic-wise, but I have no reason to think I’m a slouch when compared to him work-ethic wise.

So how much work is it to write a novel? About this much work:



Now you know.