I’m nearly (really very nearly) done with Cirque de la Nuit and I’ve been pushing myself these last couple of weeks to meet the target of publishing in August (yes I know there are only a few days left, but they still count!)

Someone just said about me finishing it up and “there’s just two more chapters to go” as if that takes a couple of hours to run off and be done with – and it made me respond by dragging up the stats to the current draft to quote just how long it takes to write a book, as I don’t think I’ll be finished today somehow!

So – not that I’m using this as a distraction from continuing Chapter 19 or anything – I thought it would be interesting to pull up all the drafts to date (I’m on version 5 currently) and see what has happened along the way.

Version 1 – started 3rd November 2015

35,006 words   Chapters 1-4   94 pages   3340 minutes

Version 2

63,636 words   Chapters 5-9   137 pages   2025 minutes

Version 3

85,373 words   Chapters ?   244 pages   4277 minutes

Version 4

103,100 words   Chapters ?   304 pages   6068 minutes

via GIPHY

So… I’m currently working through Version 5, which will likely become ‘CdlN – FINAL’ in my drafts folder before formatting for the various platforms to release. At present, it has taken just shy of four years to go from the first one-shot pieces that formed key scenes in this story to a finished book. And a total of 15,710 minutes of writing (up until today) or 261 hours of writing. It doesn’t feel like that much in some ways when you see it tabled up like that, but it sure feels like it as you go along, and especially when a lot of the time you only get a couple of hours here and there to write.

What about everyone else – do you know how long it really takes you to write a book?