How Many Hours it Takes me to Write a Book - KatherineCowley.com

How Many Hours It Takes Me to Write a Book

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How Many Hours it Takes me to Write a Book - KatherineCowley.com

On one of my blog posts recapping a year in writing, a reader recently asked how long it takes me to write a novel, and how this time breaks down between drafting and revision.

Because I track my writing time, I can answer both questions rather easily.

Question 1: Total Number of Hours to Write A Novel

For the past three novels I have written, it has taken me between 400 and 650 hours to write and revise the book.

The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet: 612.5 hours; The True Confessions of a London Spy: 464 hours. The Lady's Guide to Death and Deception: 408 hours

Question 2: The Time Breakdown (How these hours were spent)

This question gets a little more complicated, because I wrote the first drafts for The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet and The True Confessions of a London Spy at the same time. However, I went back through my time tracking app, did some number crunching, and broke things out.

Disclaimer: I came up with the premise for the series in 2013, and I did some initial research, and then spent years thinking about the characters and their motivations, daydreaming about scenes, planning emotional arcs, etc. None of this time is included in the following charts, which only include time spent after mid-2017.

Disclaimer 2: rounding occurred at various points when I exported from my time tracking app and then added numbers in Excel. If the numbers are off by an hour or two, then it’s because you’re not seeing all the rounding.

Time Spent Writing and Revising The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet

  • Research
  • Outlining
  • Draft 1
  • Draft 2
  • Draft 3
  • Newspaper Research
  • Draft 4
  • Draft 5
  • Draft 6 (with agent)
  • Draft 7 (with agent)
  • Revisions with Publisher
  • Other Tasks
  • 76 hours
  • 34 hours
  • 113 hours
  • 88.5 hours
  • 108 hours
  • 18 hours
  • 6 hours
  • 14.5 hours
  • 77.5 hours
  • 17 hours
  • 33 hours
  • 27 hours

Note: the first draft, which took me 113 hours, was spread out (along with research and outlining) over a period of 11 months. This was a novel that took time to simmer and develop!

What each draft focused on

First draft: The first draft is for me to get the story down. I do revise some as I go, but I also leave plenty of comments for myself for things to fix later. Sometimes I will skip scenes or chapters that I know I will need to add in a future draft, and I am often missing names for key characters (I’ll have lots of _________ to show that I need to add it later). I never show full first drafts to anyone, but I did show bits and pieces to my monthly writing group to get some initial feedback.

Second draft: This draft is the get-it-ready-to-look-at by other people draft. I fill in whatever gaps are left from the first draft, do lots of big picture changes (plot, structure, emotion, relationships, and character), and constantly tweak things at a language and sentence level.

Then I sent the book to my first round of critique partners.

Third draft: Some people break out different types of edits (structural, character, language) into different drafts. I kind of do them all at once. First I created a very large chart on my wall which helped me figure out how to fix bigger picture plot and character problems, and then I dove into changes. For me, a draft sometimes consists of multiple passes–during a single revision, I may go through chapters anywhere from 1 to 4 times, and sometimes I’ll be revising a later chapter and realize I need to go back and change something in a previous chapter that I thought was finished. I decide a draft is finished when I’ve taken care of all the things that seem most crucial–that are really bothering me. I won’t necessarily address every single thing my critique partners have suggested; some I do save for future revisions, and others I set aside and don’t incorporate.

I then added newspaper headings and sent the book to a new set of critique partners. (I like to use people who haven’t yet read the novel and can offer a fresh perspective.) In this case, draft four did not take very long, and then I started querying agents. Then I did another draft and queried more. Then I got my agent–and I wrote a post that talks about the revisions that I did with my agent.

Once the book was acquired by Tule, we did a content edit, another more minor content edit, an edit to make the book shorter, and then copyedits and proofreads.

Time Spent Writing and Revising The True Confessions of a London Spy

  • Research
  • Outlining
  • Draft 1
  • Draft 2
  • Draft 3
  • Newspaper Research
  • Draft 4
  • Draft 5
  • Revisions with Publisher
  • Other Tasks
  • 67 hours
  • 9 hours
  • 48 hours
  • 149.5 hours
  • 11.5 hours
  • 19 hours
  • 71 hours
  • 48 hours
  • 35.5 hours
  • 5 hours

You will notice that I spent a lot less time on this first draft. However, I paid for it during the second draft, which still holds its winning place as the hardest draft I have ever written in my life.

The drafting process was similar to the first book, however, because the second draft was such a major revision, in this case I did a quick third draft to clean things up before sending to critique partners.

Time Spent Writing and Revising The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception

  • Research
  • Outlining
  • Draft 1
  • Draft 2
  • Draft 3
  • Newspaper Research
  • Draft 4
  • Revisions with Publisher
  • Other Tasks
  • 24 hours
  • 14 hours
  • 147 hours
  • 64 hours
  • 93 hours
  • 16 hours
  • 26.5 hours
  • 20 hours
  • 3 hours

I wrote the first draft of The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception over a period of six months. And that was hard–I don’t think I could easily write a first draft in less than that, because I only have so many high-level creative energy on any given day or week, and there are parts of the creative process that just can’t be rushed.

Why Some Books Take More or Less Time

If I’m going to undergo some self-analysis and reflection (why not? I made charts!) then I would say that the first book in the series took the longest in part because it was the first book. I was still figuring out characters, relationships, and arcs. And I was able to apply a lot of what I figured out about the characters–as well as a lot of the research–to books 2 and 3.

My agent and my editor also taught me things about writing, and mysteries specifically, which I was able to apply in the process of writing both books 2 and 3. This truly did cut out a couple of drafts.

Also, book 3 in the series was the only book I have written in which I managed to include both the plot AND all the major sub-plots in the first draft. (In the first draft of both The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet and The True Confessions of a London Spy, I had most of the subplots, but the main plot was shaky.)

How Long It Will Take Me to Write Future Books

Prior to the Mary Bennet series, I wrote several (unpublished) novels, but I wasn’t as exact about keeping track of time. Based on the records I have, one novel probably took me at least 700 hours. A novella I wrote (“Tatterhood and the Prince’s Hand“) took about 144 hours.

I truly expect that all my future novels will take me at least 400 hours, and if it’s the first book in a series, it could very likely be in the 600 hour range. I’m currently working on a new secret novel, and I’ve already spent 33 hours on brainstorming and research. I could easily have another 60 to 100 hours of research and outlining before I’m ready to start writing the first draft.

I have a number of writing friends who write much more quickly than I do, but I also have plenty of writing friends who take comparable or longer amounts of time to write and revise a novel. There’s no one right way to do it, and either can produce amazing work, as long as it works well with your writing process and your other life commitments.

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Mary Higgins Clark Panel

Free Upcoming Event: Mystery Writers of America Symposium

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Mary Higgins Clark Panel

This year, in advance of the Edgar Awards, Mystery Writers of America is holding a virtual symposium.

I will be part of a panel with other nominees for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. I feel really honored to be talk about mystery novels with these amazing authors.

The event is free for anyone to attend. All you need to do is register in advance: https://bit.ly/MWAMaryHigginsClark

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Researching The True Confessions of a London Spy in London

Researching The True Confessions of a London Spy in London

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Researching The True Confessions of a London Spy in London

One of the best parts of writing The True Confessions of a London Spy was visiting London.

I wrote a somewhat sparse first draft of London Spy during the second half of 2018. And then, in October 2019, I had the opportunity of a lifetime. I got to visit London.

While this was largely a family vacation, I coopted parts of the trip for research. There were places in London that I knew were going to be in the book, and I had to visit those places, as well as museums and historic buildings that I knew would help me with my research. A few months later, as I wrote the second draft of the novel, I ended up needing a few new settings for key scenes. I ended up choosing places that had an impact on me during the London trip.

Exhibit A: The Monument to the Great Fire

A view of the Monument to the Great Fire of London

Because of all the other buildings, it is difficult to get a good picture of the Monument to the Great Fire.

The Author in front of the base of the Monument to the Great Fire of London

Me, next to the bottom of the Monument. Picture by one of my children.

Why I Chose The Monument

I knew that the Monument to the Great Fire would be important even before I wrote the first draft of the novel. So much of London—its architecture, its culture, its people—was influenced by the destructive 1666 fire. In 1814, when my book was set, this monument still acted as a symbol to the city—a symbol of what was lost, a symbol of tragedy, a symbol of change.

In the book, I needed Mary to be at a setting that was close the old (now no-longer existent) Customs House, and I chose the Monument because of the symbolism for London, and how this symbolism relates to her own story. I’ll avoid spoilers, but I will say:

Who we are is intrinsically connected to the difficult things that happen to us: these challenges and tragedies become interwoven into the fiber of our being. These moments transform us, and not always in a clear way. It’s not a net good or net bad change. But you can’t go to the past and swoop in and erase what happened, or you would have a completely different city, a completely different person.


Me, at the top of the Monument, contemplating whether Mary Bennet would actually choose to climb the 300+ steps to the top. I considered adding this climb to the second draft, but decided against it.

Descending the steps at the Monument to the Great Fire

Descending the steps of the Monument to the Great Fire. Carrying 3-year-olds is a great workout, even when going down.

Exhibit B: Other London Sites

London Streets
Taking a picture of the Tower of London
The River Thames
Museum of London -- Victorian Shop
Victorian Fabric Shop in the Museum of London

To see the individual captions, click the expand button on one of the photos.

Many of the stereotypical visuals that we associate with London did not exist in 1814: Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, and the Eye. Others did exist–like St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London–but didn’t end up in the book.

A lot of what was useful was being able to walk through the London streets and experience the flavor of the city. I spent a lot of time walking along the River Thames and picturing what it would have looked like in 1814, covered in ice.

One of my big priorities for the trip was visiting the Museum of London. As you go through the museum, you walk through different eras of London’s history. I may have spent an excess amount of time in the 1600-1900 section. There was clothing, fans, models of houses, and scientific devices. One of the exhibits was a reconstructed section of Victorian streets and shops. While that postdates The True Confessions of a London Spy by a few years, it wasn’t that different than it would’ve been in the Regency period.

Exhibit C: Shakespeare in London

The first draft of the novel was about half the length of the final novel. It had plenty of subplots, but no plot, and it was missing a number of key characters. As such, in the second draft I had to add a plot, a number of characters, and plenty of new chapters and scenes. Which meant that I also had the opportunity to incorporate additional London settings.

One of the things that struck me during our visit to London was how much Shakespeare was part of the fabric of the city.

A Shakespeare mural in London. Picture by my husband, Scott Cowley.

I’ve loved Shakespeare since my junior year of high school, when an amazing English teacher introduced me to Hamlet and we watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead performed live. After my London trip, as I worked on building the character of Alys Knowles, I realized that I wanted Alys to love Shakespeare—this is her defining interest. During her life, Jane Austen read and attended Shakespeare plays, and she makes Shakespearean references in a number of her novels, so I thought it would be fitting.

Even though readers don’t meet the character of Alys Knowles in scene until the end of The True Confessions of a London Spy, Shakespeare became woven throughout the story, a lens through which to perceive relationships and interactions.

As I built up to the scene between Alys Knowles, Mary Bennet, and Fanny Cramer, I realized that I wanted the setting to have a connection to Shakespeare.

I considered placing the scene at Southwark Cathedral—this was the area where Shakespeare had lived, after all, it was near where the Globe had been located, and the cathedral predated Shakespeare by centuries.

View of Southwark Cathedral Outside of Southwark Cathedral

One of my favorite parts of visiting Southwark Cathedral was seeing the stained glass window commemorating Shakespeare, but when I did some research, I realized that the stained glass had been added too late.

However, I liked the idea of using a religious edifice with a Shakespearean connection, because of the sense of immortality that gives. Which made me think of another place I had visited in London: Westminster Abbey.

Westminster Abbey is like walking among a who’s who of famous British dead people, and while Shakespeare was buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, there is a full-life marble statue of him in the Poets’ Corner. I realized that this was the public, safe spot that Alys Knowles would choose for a meeting.

While it is very possible to write a book without visiting the setting, and I have a number of research techniques that I’ve used when visiting a place is not an option, it truly was a remarkable experience to be able to visit London while writing a book set in London. London is one of my favorite cities, and I certainly plan to visit again.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Newspapers in the Mary Bennet Series

Everything You Wanted to Know About Newspapers in the Mary Bennet Series

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Newspapers in the Mary Bennet Series

Some of the most common questions I get about The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet and The True Confessions of a London Spy relate to the epigraphs at the start of each chapter:

  • Are they from real newspapers?
  • What inspired you to include these epigraphs?
  • What purpose do they serve?/ What do they mean?
  • How did you find them?

In this post, I’m going to give readers the answers to each of these questions.

The first page of The True Confessions of a London Spy, with an epigraph from The Times

Are they from real newspapers?

Almost all of the passages are real excerpts from real newspapers, with the exception of three headings in Secret Life and two headings in London Spy. In the upcoming third novel, The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception, only one is from my own imagination, and one is from a letter instead of a newspaper.

What inspired you to include these epigraphs?

I loved the short newspaper excerpts at the start of each chapter in Mary Robinette Kowal’s alternate history science fiction novel The Calculating Stars, and I thought that they would fit well in my own story.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

What purpose do they serve? What do they mean?

The newspaper excerpts do a number of things:

  • Historical underpinning: unlike Jane Austen’s contemporary readers, most of us today don’t know the full historical context of the Regency. I wanted to Mary Bennet to solve mysteries that deal directly with the historical events and social issues of the day, and including these excerpts helps provide that context for the reader. For example, I wanted to establish the widespread dread of Napoleon Bonaparte, which is clearly present in the newspapers.
  • Mary and other spies read a lot of newspapers: In the books, Mary, Lady Trafford, and other characters read numerous newspapers. I wanted to give a sense for some of the stories they encounter.
  • Direct commentary on the content of the chapters: Because I use real historical events in the novels, many of the newspapers made direct commentary on these events. For example, in The True Confessions of a London Spy, the account that The Times made of the customs house explosion is devastating, and in the third novel, The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception, I wanted to showcase some of the alternative viewpoints on the war that aren’t held by the main characters of my story.

A portion of the first article in The Times about the Custom House fire, printed on February 14, 1814

  • Parallels and Alternate Experiences: Some of the epigraphs are not specifically connected to any of the events, but they create parallel narratives and showcase alternate experiences. For instance, in each of the books I include excerpts about women in disguise or as spies. In London Spy, the weather acts as a sort of character and so receives a number of newspaper excerpts.
  • Other Purposes: At times the newspaper excerpts are in conversation with the subtext of the novel, deal with the themes of the book, or add humor or satire to elements of a chapter.

How did you find the excerpts?

For each of the books, I waited until at least the third draft to start looking for newspaper headings. I needed the overall story to be mostly solidified, and I wanted the date each chapter occurred to be relatively fixed.

I used two newspaper subscriptions: a personal subscription to the British Newspaper Archives (which has digitized hundreds of newspapers), and a university subscription to The Times.

The British Newspaper Archive

The tricky part is that computer programs have a hard time reading old newspapers, some of which were not well preserved. If you do a search in the British Newspaper Archives for the name Napoleon or Bonaparte in the year 1814, you’re lucky if the computer program finds 10% of the actual references. (It also doesn’t help that some of the newspapers wrote his name as Buonaparte to try to delegitimize his rule.). Most of the time instead of searching, I would download half a dozen different newspapers for a given day and read them.

Sometimes I had something very specific in mind that I was looking for—I was looking for a news story Bonaparte, crime, the stock exchange, the or the Viennese Waltz, or the weather. Yet most of the time I didn’t have a specific type of news in mind. Instead, I would read the articles with a sense of discovery, letting myself wander to columns or advertisements that drew my attention, and finding endless connections to my book. Sometimes I would find the perfect article quickly; other times I would choose three or four possibilities and then consider which really had the effect I wanted for the chapter, and fit the overall arc of the epigraphs.

I quickly got a good feel for different newspapers of the news, which ones were liberal or conservative, had the most interesting ads, included a regular fashion column, published poetry, or wrote the best opinion pieces. There was also a variety of different formats—while many of the newspapers only printed ads on the first page, others included articles from the start. Newspapers would reprint articles from other papers, and sometimes the news would be about events weeks or months in the past, depending on how long it took the information to reach England’s shores.

Sometimes I shifted the dates and timeline for a book because I really wanted to use as particular newspaper heading. And I definitely revised numerous details in the chapters because of things I learned through reading the newspapers—for example, in London Spy, Kitty’s reference to ice skating in Hyde Park came from a newspaper reference.

I have now read hundreds of newspapers from 1813, 1814, and 1815, and I feel like doing so has not only helped my books, but made me a more interesting person at parties—after all, who doesn’t want to hear 1814 trivia?

More About My Journey with Newspapers

All this newspapering has influenced my readings of other Jane Austen texts.

I also did a guest post on My Favorite Bit, talking about some of my favorite newspaper excerpts.

Coming Soon!

Next week, on this blog, I’ll be posting about my trip to London and how that influenced the setting of The True Confessions of a London Spy. I’ll also be showing some of the actual dresses that were influences for Fanny’s designs. So come back to the blog, keep a watch on social media, or subscribe to my newsletter!

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Jane Austen Men as Potatoes

Jane Austen Men as Potatoes

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In December, I participated in the #16DaysofJane challenge by @bookhoarding on Twitter. The theme for Day 6 was potatoes, and after a lively text conversation with my friend Brooke Lamoreaux, who told me that all Austen men are actually potatoes, I posted the following on social media. For the sake of posterity, I’ve decided it better me on my blog as well.

Mr. Collins: Boiled Potatoes. Boring but he means well. Also, he seems to be everywhere.
Frank Churchill: Funeral Potatoes. Chewy and delicious. Can only eat if there's a funeral.
Mr. Elliot: Potato Chowder. Insulted your family. Now is dressed as a chowder. Still a potato.
John Thorpe - Potato Salad. Sometimes potato salad is good. Your brother brought it so you feel obligated to try it.
John Willoughby: French Fries. So incredibly delicious. But too much isn't good for you.

As demonstrated, all Jane Austen men are potatoes. What type of potato do you think Mr. Darcy is? What about Mr. Bingley? I’d love to hear in the comments.

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