In 2000 I wrote a 300 page long spy thriller that was complete poop (as most spy thrillers are). I dropped it an never thought about it again… so maybe I should say I’m 31 and I just finished my second.

Then in 2002 I started writing another one and I got about 40k words in, and life intervened (wrote a thesis, a dissertation, 25 published academic articles, etc, started working full time, etc). I was cleaning out my hard drive and was about to delete it, and wanted to read what I had written. I really liked it and decided to make a run at finishing it. I did, and it ended up at 85k words. I then used my Nanowrimo month to EDIT the thing… I killed 10k words of fluff.

Now I’m simul-writing novels 3 and 4, but I’m really focusing on one of them at the expense of the other. I’m 1/2 way through and hoping that this one might be the one.

Anyway, in spite of that, it seems that I am only on the first stage to being a novel writer, according to you. In four days of writing, I’ve only managed some three thousand words of fiction. It took quite a while, and for most of the part I did absolutely nothing but stare at text for ages, just trying to find suitable words to continue it. Even the writing itself seems somewhat awkward.

An excerpt, for an example:

‘The air was cool. The breeze that drifted lightly into our clubroom from its open window was refreshing, poise. From the past rain, dews suspended gently, but nobody would see them. Though I could not smell them, I could feel the humidity in the atmosphere being slightly heavier than usual. The ambience could in all likehood encourage lively and briskness.’

I suppose I’ll keep on writing, but I thought I’d just add this little comment. Thanks though for writing this up. It will prepare me mentally for the foreboding.

My career follows a similar path to many of the other writers who offered their data.
Began writing stories as a child (1978)
Began seriously writing as a teen (1984)
Published poetry & short stories (1993 – 2007)
wrote my first novel at age 28
(self-published it in 2006, at age 36)
began second novel at 35-ish
secured an agent and sold second (& third unwritten novel) to Del Rey at age 37
“Ice Song” hits stores in 2009 (39!)
My second novel is scheduled for publication in 2011. I’m hopeful that they’ll squeeze it in while I’m still 40.

Another aspect of the writing life no one has yet mentioned is the time one takes to scrape together your ambition/desire after receiving many, many rejections and then mustering the courage to brave the publishing markets again. It takes an immense amount of fortitude to keep going. I suspect that most of us work in cycles, between fallow periods of withdrawal and creative regeneration. Stories have their own gestational timeframes and can’t be hurried. Much of our writing time is spent brooding over eggs that may or may not hatch, but what a delight when they do!

http://shuabparvez.wordpress.com/

Lots of people have suggested that it takes about 10,000 hours of effort to get really good at something – whether it’s playing an instrument, or painting, or computer programming.

The thing of it is, most professional musicians started playing when they were five or even younger, and were doing hours of practice a day while still in single digits. Most writers, on the other hand, don’t start seriously working at their writing until they’re out of high school, at least.

Your points about ‘working up’ to a novel and comparing novel writing to marathon running are good. I certainly found at the very beginning that writing lots of very short pieces developed my nuts-and-bolts, sentence structure and dialogue skills. Moving on to short stories builds your plotting and characterisation skills. Writing a novel is another thng entirely – there’s so much big-picture stuff to keep track of, and at the same time you’re employing the same nuts-and-bolts skills you learnt back when your stories were 500 word sketches.

Takes a long time for all that to get into muscle memory, so you can devote most of your attention to plodding along with your novel and not dropping any of your plot threads.

*glares at second novel*. My first was, indeed, a bit of a monstrous thing. I suspect most of them are.

In summary, and in case of tl;dr: Yes, yes, and yes. I wonder, though, about those who start really early – who get those dire first novels out of their systems in their early teens. Are there so few writers who do this?

As usual, you take a very sad and depressing topic and turn it into a very light-hearted commentary. As someone who stared writing late in life (50), I can appreciate that I may be collecting Social Security before I publish a novel! Thanks for all of your good works, and may the Gods of Bacon watch over you and yours…

I’ve always written–poetry, essays, long letters–but it didn’t occur to me to try to write professionally until my first son was born. So….

1986-1989. Starting at the age of 29, I wrote 4 novel-length ms, all of which have been whacked with shovels and buried behind the shed.

1989. Proposal for ELFSHADOW, first published book, accepted. Wrote and revised book.

1991. ELFSHADOW published at age 35.

2009. Working on book #21.