How long does it take you to write?

[Trebor1415]

I had to be extra productive at work lately and I learned that no matter how far I am behind the deadline, I can only produce copy up to a certain speed that is just a little faster then my normal speed.

I've found that I can produce about 200-250 words of finished, polished copy in an hour. This is stuff that meets my own quality standards and is ready to be edited or turned into a client.

What's interesting is that I've noticed that it takes about the same time per page to write a high quality epinion, an academic paper or a 1,300 word construction project profile for work. However, I've noticed that I can write a straight news story in a shorter period of time.

I'm curious how fast other people write and if you've noticed a difference in the amount of time depending on the type of writing.

Rob

[juliette]

Interesting question, interesting answer.

When I do freelance assignments (on topics about which I have neutral feelings or interest) I can write 1000 words of "finished polished copy" in almost exactly 5 hours, or about the same as your 200 wrds/hr. rate.

If I feel passionate or keenly interested in something, like a piece of fiction say, or an epinion, I write about twice as fast (and get paid about 1/10th as much!)

The worst is having to churn out 1000 or 1500 words on something or someone I actively despise, but have to portray in a positive light. I once worked for a string of small-town papers as an Entertainment Reporter, writing profiles of local artists and entertainers. When I'd get to a venue or interview, and realize that the "artist" in question had little or no talent, my heart would just sink, because I'd know already that the piece would take me 10-15 hours to write...

[soxfan[$]]

Um, long. Really, really, really long. My muse thinks she gets paid by the hour, so she tries to draw things out. Little does she know ...

Things do go quicker when I'm writing about something I know and care about. That seems to matter more than length, oddly enough. I had the hardest time at one job where I had to slap together headlines and two-sentence blurbs for bands I'd never even heard of, much less heard.

Ailsa
who's not too fond of 25-page papers, either

[taurusmoon]

Depends.

Sara
Who dashed off that bit of writing in no time.

[Trebor1415]

Anyone else? Or are you all just still working on your responses...

Seriously, though, one of the reasons I asked is I'll probably be unemployed soon and I plan on doing some free lance work while I look for a job. (When I get back from my wedding in Hawaii) I thought it would to know how my speed compares to others so I can better market my services.

Thanks

Rob

[purplewiz]

You know, I've never really timed it.

If I'm inspired, and I have the general approach for the piece in my head, I basically can churn out 90% finished prose as fast as I can type and select words in my head. Call it 2 hours of typing and an hour of editing for 1000 - 1500 words, rough numbers I'm pulling out of somewhere.

If I'm semi-inspired, where I know what I want to say but don't have the structure in place, it'll be 2-3 hours of typing and another good 2-3 hours of editing, which puts me at the 200 - 250 range others were mentioning.

If I'm forcing myself to write something, it can take darned near forever. I have a file of half started epinions reviews that I just stopped because I either lost interest or realized I didn't care. (There are a couple of books I want to review, but most of my criticism of them is based on having read the rest of the author's works, and I haven't figured out how to pull that together.) If I have to force one of these to completion, it's maybe 50 words an hour, with me kicking and screaming all the way.

I admit, I like the first kind of writing best, where the writing isn't so much writing as transcribing everything in my head. I just wish I could make it happen more reliably.

Side note: I've noticed that my natural voice for written pieces, be they product reviews for epinions or essays for elsewhere, almost always fall between 1000 and 1500 words. It's weird - I didn't notice that until I finally started looking at my word counts.

[Trebor1415]

Originally posted by purplewiz

Side note: I've noticed that my natural voice for written pieces, be they product reviews for epinions or essays for elsewhere, almost always fall between 1000 and 1500 words. It's weird - I didn't notice that until I finally started looking at my word counts.

I know what you mean. All my Epinions (all 6 of 'em) are about 1,000 words. At work I'm supposed to write construction project profiles that run 1,000 to 1,200 words and I find that my natural length for those wants to run to about 1,300 words. Even when I want to write shorter (like because of deadline pressure) I find that it still takes me about 1,300 words to really wrap up the project.

The good news is 100 words over is OK by my editor, especially since about 100 words of each story is boilerplate info on size, ownership, construction dates, architect and contractor ID, etc. That really leaves us only 900-1100 words to tell the story if we kept to the prefered length.

Rob

[Trebor1415]

Originally posted by purplewiz

I admit, I like the first kind of writing best, where the writing isn't so much writing as transcribing everything in my head. I just wish I could make it happen more reliably.

Me too. I've had that happen on a couple of short stories and it was wonderous. In both cases I was just working from a single idea with no outline where I didn't know what was going to happen next. The story just unfolded itself onto the paper.

Maybe that's the problem I've been having with fiction lately. Maybe I've spent too much time outlining and planning and not enough time just putting an idea on paper and seeing where it takes me.

Rob

[Redlass]

This is a tough question to answer. I don't know for sure. When I'm writing a textbook chapter or an industry white paper, I usually write at about the rate of 10 pages a day (that's figuring approximately four hours of writing time squashed between other duties). However, I've usually done at least a week worth of research and have lots of notes and interviews before I get started. So how long did it take? The week of writing only? Or the two weeks of researching and writing?

An Epinion I usually write in about an hour and they seem to run about 1,500 words (though that varies pretty widely). However, I've usually done a lot of pre-writing in my head, so the actual typing up of a review doesn't take that long.

Fiction takes me forever to write. I've spent three hours writing three pages for a short story.

[Trebor1415]

Originally posted by Redlass
This is a tough question to answer. I don't know for sure. When I'm writing a textbook chapter or an industry white paper, I usually write at about the rate of 10 pages a day (that's figuring approximately four hours of writing time squashed between other duties). However, I've usually done at least a week worth of research and have lots of notes and interviews before I get started. So how long did it take? The week of writing only? Or the two weeks of researching and writing?

An Epinion I usually write in about an hour and they seem to run about 1,500 words (though that varies pretty widely). However, I've usually done a lot of pre-writing in my head, so the actual typing up of a review doesn't take that long.

Fiction takes me forever to write. I've spent three hours writing three pages for a short story.

Thanks for the info. I do mean just the acutal writing time, not including time spent doing interviews or research.

Thinking back, I do think my Epinions went quicker then my writing at work. I probably spent about 2-3 hours per 1,000 word or so Epinion, but that includes leafing back through the books to find certain passages, etc. The camera review I wrote is about 1,000 words, and I probably did that in about an hour and a half. I didn't have to do any real research, other then look at the camera, and I didn't have to refer to any notes or anything when I was writing it. However, I don't think I've ever written 1,500 words in an hour.

Rob

There are times when the screen would just scroll by with the words. I've filled 5 pages or so in Word in an hour when I've gotten on a dialogue roll that I've already talked out in the shower or while driving or while jogging and walking.

At least one WBM story or post gets completed a day. There are days when I send 2 or 3 across the finish line, anywhere from 3 to 20 pages long.

I keep several Word windows up at once so that when I get in a lull on one story and the other stories are creeping and peeking around the corner of my mind, I can put them on the old mental CPU main thread and let them whiz by. I keep one folder FULL of drafts and ideas, and any separate idea I come up with gets turned into its own Word document within 30 seconds.. Even if I forget the idea, it's there to shine the light bulbs all over again.

I don't think I have hit this level of productivity before, and it frightens me.

[quasar]

It depends on the material. I write heavily technical stuff like programming documentation very slowly, but a lot of that time is research and experimentation.

Poetry comes really fast. Fiction comes fast but in spurts. Nothing can make me write when it doesn't want to come out but it rushs out when I'm "in the zone."

Epinions or other reviews? Until yesterday the longest I remember spending on a review was about 90 minutes for an almost 4000 word Palm review (my HandEra 330 review). I write most of my reviews in 1-2 commutes (each of about 30 minutes). Yesterday I had a horrible time with my Silver Chair review and although it's only 1300 or so words it took a few hours.

Actually that's not true. I may have spent a bit longer on some of my long music reviews because I always listen to the songs as I write and sometimes do so several times. So some of the music reviews take longer, but not all of that is actual writing.

Janice

[jo.com]

Oh my gosh, yes. I can write a shampoo or dog food review in 30 minutes or so - maybe 45 I tend to do research...but I can spend an hour or more on a book, magazine. I don't have little kids, but the few times I've written about toys, that has only taken about 20 minutes! And if I attempt something out of my league like something that gets plugged into something else - it could take me 2 days!

[Workingmomof2]

Oh, goodness - I will have to agree with the comment that it totally depends on the subject. When I write copy for work (Technical data) I can really crank it out, but the more research is needed, the longer it takes me.

I don't think I've ever written a review in less than an hour -- even simple ones on toys or simple kitchen products take at least that long -- but then again, I'm a gabber.

Some of my longer and more detailed reviews (like on Disneyland or Ebay) have taken me literally days. I write mostly late at night or early in the morning, though.

Does that help?

[njl]

This is a really difficult question to answer and even more difficult to measure. There are so many factors involved, especially you have duties to take care of on the job in addition to writing, such as graphic design, desktop publishing, and web design/development. So often these days, I find that more and more companies are demanding more and compensating less for talented writers. It may just be my situation or area of the country that I work in, but it is quite discouraging. Above all else, I want to keep my self respect and integrity when giving of my time and energy to writing. At my current job of 7+ years, I am and have been the only technical writer on staff, and because I have all these other duties to get done that are related to media production, publication, and distribution, we have too many people who think they can write, but really cannot. These people are programmers, sales people, trainers, and yes, owners. So, they try to circumvent the process of having the technical writer edit and proof their work on a consistent basis. What ends up happening is that sloppy and unprofessional garbage is released to customers, which compromises the integrity of the company. If enough of that happens, it can be quite damaging to the company's reputation. I mean, who would want to be associated with a company that is known for having staff that releases sloppily written letters, publications, presentations, etc.? I surely do not, and it frustrates me to no end that the owner will allow this to happen. fight this bitter battle almost every day. But, sometimes the boss will do whatever he wants, and there is nothing you can do about it. And it is obvious that the owner will do this only because he is too cheap to pay someone to do job and give them enough time to do the job right. But, back to answering the original question of this thread, it takes me roughly about 1 hour to write 1-2 pages of good copy that I am interested in. But this is with no distraction or other things to interrupt me. Anyone else have any similar experiences as described above? If so, I would really like to hear about them. Thanks.

[Freelance Momma]

Many times I begin to write and the ideas just flow and I finish very quickly. Of course, I do occassionally combat writer's block which slows me down considerably.