When we start
writing a book, we have no clue how long it will take. Most first-time
book writers think maybe a year, two at the most? A colleague was both
relieved and dismayed to learn from a graduate-school panel of published
writers that memoirs typically take seven years to write. Rebecca
Skloot, author of the best-seller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
said her book took ten years and it couldn't have gone any faster--she
needed all that time.
But we're seduced by workshops and craft
books that promise a completed manuscript, ready for agents, in nine
months. I recently saw a workshop that was called "Novel in a
Month." I participate in Nanowrimo regularly (National Novel Writers
Month) and have even published a novel from that marathon, but it didn't
come out finished--it needed a couple of years of revision before it
was ready for other eyes.
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