Sean asked Darren Shan:

Hey Darren, I remember reading many of your books when I was younger, and spending hours reading about the adventures you created. I was just wondering how many hours you would prescribe a writer to write each day to master their skills?

Darren Shan There's no standard amount. Each writer is different. What I think works best is setting a goal that you know you can achieve, and then hitting that goal regularly and routinely. e.g. You might decide to write for one hour every Saturday and one hour every Sunday. I know that's not a huge amount, but if you do that EVERY weekend, the words will soon mount up, and the routine will be good for you and help you develop. I think that's better than writing in a frenzy one weekend -- five or six hours hours each day -- then doing nothing for a couple of months. Personally, I find word targets are better than hour targets. i.e. If you set yourself a goal to write for one hour each Saturday and Sunday, you might spend 50 minutes of that thinking, and only commit a few lines to paper, but if you set yourself a goal of half a page or one page each of those days, you're going to come away with more to show for your work. There's no hiding when you work according to a word count -- you can fool yourself into thinking you've done a good hour's work if you sit still for an hour and not actually producing very much, but if you work to a word count you will always know at the end of your session whether or not you've been productive or just going through the motions.

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