The short answer is, it took me approximately 5 years to write three books. So, I suppose on average, that’s 1.66 years per book…

I expect there are some authors out there who simply sit down and write a book, and it’s all wonderfully straight forward. I, however, am not one of those authors. My books seem to need a twistier, more confusing path towards completion.

Even now, as I write my fourth novel, I seem incapable of following a straight path through the project. There are so many pauses to work on other projects, pivots to re-direct the plot, and…well… distractions.

But more on that later.

For now, I’ll look back on the process and timeline for writing my first three novels, The Quiescence Trilogy.

Initial Idea

If you don’t already know this about me, I keep an idea journal. This is where I jot down every random creative idea I ever have, so that I can return to them later when I have time or I’m ready to work on a new project.

There are a couple of ideas in my journal that I can track back as far as high school. The Quiescence Trilogy came out of one of those ideas. In 2008 or 2009 I came up with the initial idea for the story. It involved a golden potion that bestows powers, and a very basic version of the final plot with only three of the main characters (Catanya, Cadyan, and Jémys).

I jotted the idea down in my journal and let it sit there for years.

Fun fact: I originally wanted to write the story in French. Actually, I was determined it had to be that way. So, part of why it took me so long to get around to writing the novel was because I was waiting until I felt strong enough in my written French to write an entire story. Finally, I realized I should just write it in English because no matter how good my French gets, it will never be that good.  

Plotting and Planning

Somewhere along the line, I realized that if I wanted to write books, I should just write one and see what happens.

I was in my last year of my Masters in Music Composition, and generally not very happy. Stressed and disillusioned with the life of a composer, I decided to hide inside a story for a while. I didn’t think it would go anywhere, but I started plotting the novel, and then it snowballed. Every night, I came home excited to plot some more of the book. It was just a bullet list in a basic Word document, but it kept getting longer and longer, and twistier and turnier, and so so much fun! I plotted the entire thing in something like 5 weeks.

But then I remembered I had to write my master’s thesis. So, I forced myself to stop and go do the work I was supposed to do. Ugh.

Writing

With my Master’s degree over, I dove back into the novel. I had a full-time job and a part-time job at the time, so I only wrote on weekends and evenings. But I pretty much wrote all night every night and all weekend every weekend.  

Then I took a week of vacation in March 2019. I only had something like ten chapters left, and I was determined to finish it. So, I stayed home writing all day every day that week.

And the first draft of the novel was done!

I think I took a break after the first draft, but honestly, I’m not sure.

Edits and Expansion

Next came edits. I did at least two full edits of the novel, fine tuning it and making sure it was ready to be seen. I remember towards the end of writing the first draft, I came up with a new idea that I retroactively incorporated into the story. I remember sitting with the first draft, and knowing in my heart that the idea was a good idea and I needed to flesh it out way more than I had. I knew the story needed to be expanded into three shorter stories, but I was having trouble admitting it.

Then I asked some of my friends and family to read it and give me feedback. This was so wonderful. For a while, I lived off the excitement of hearing people’s reactions and feedback. It was awesome.  

As the feedback came in, I continued editing. And more and more, I realized that it needed to be expanded. So that’s what I did.

I did a massive edit and expansion rewrite, hacking and slashing at the blah stuff, and adding in new characters, new subplots, and more world-building. It was early 2021 when I finally had three distinct novels.

Publishing

By this time, I had decided to self-publish the trilogy. Lots of factors went into this decision, which I’ll detail in another post. But once that decision was made, I set aside book two and three temporarily, to focus on book one.  

I hired a copyeditor for the first book. She was great, and she worked incredibly fast. I learned a lot from her notes and worked on improving my actual writing. I also had one of my beta readers do another pass of the first novel, and she was incredible. She sent me hundreds and hundreds of notes about plot and characterization. She was as helpful as a developmental editor would have been.

Book One, The Relics of Illayan, was published in November 2021. And then I returned to book two. I did another edit of two and three, to make sure I didn’t miss anything or cause any problems for book three. Then I set book three aside again, and repeated the editing process for book two. I didn’t hire the copyeditor again, because I felt confident on my own. But I did hire the amazing beta reader to officially do developmental edits.

Book Two, The Warrior Queen, was published in May 2022 and Book Three, The Age of Resonance, was published in November 2022.

Conclusion

So, I suppose you could say the novel took me 14 years to write, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I started seriously plotting the novel in Autumn 2017 and I published the third book in autumn 2022. That’s 5 years for three books. 1.66 years per book.

Right now, I’m working on a standalone novel, and I was hoping I could have it ready in 1.5 years, but life keeps getting in the way. I also keep forgetting that balancing multiple creative projects is difficult. When I wrote the trilogy, it was my sole creative focus most of the time. Now, I have a dozen different projects tugging at my attention.

As I write this, I realize my timeline for my next novel may have been unrealistic. But I think I can still aim to have the book ready in 2025, which would mean it took 2 or 2.5 years to write.

That’s not too bad, is it?