Day 266: Writing totals

Now that book 3 is done, I decided to take a look at how long it took me to write the book and compare it to the other two books in the series.

Totals:
Lady Wynwood's Spies, volume 3 totals:
Outlining: 8 hours, 41 minutes
Blocking: 42 hours, 16 minutes
Writing: 82 hours, 55 minutes
Editing: 37 hours, 25 minutes
Total word count: 83,844 (rough draft)
Total hours: 171 hours, 17 minutes

Lady Wynwood's Spies, volume 2 totals:
Outlining: 26 hours, 13 minutes
Blocking: 48 hours, 49 minutes
Writing: 84 hours, 44 minutes
Editing: 33 hours, 30 minutes
Total word count: 86,449
Total hours: 193 hours, 16 minutes

Lady Wynwood's Spies, volume 1 totals:
Outlining: 153 hours, 48 minutes
Blocking: 0 hours, 0 minutes
Writing: 244 hours, 38 minutes
Editing: 74 hours, 43 minutes
Total word count: 108,572
Total hours: 473 hours, 9 minutes

Book 1 took me extra long since I switched up the series premise in the middle of writing the book, and I ended up trashing most of what I’d written (which was about 90k words). I hadn’t been tracking my blocking time separately for book 1, and the blocking is included in the writing time.

My time for book 2 is similar to my numbers for book 3, although I took less time for outlining book 3. But considering the slightly larger number of words for book 2 versus book 3, the writing pace for both books is about the same.

What I’d really like to do is reduce my writing time, and maybe my blocking time, without increasing my editing time. To be honest, because of my repetitive motion injury in my right wrist and right shoulder, it’s less painful for me to type than it is to use the mouse, so editing is more tiring on my wrist/shoulder than writing. Anything that would increase my editing time would be bad—I can’t afford to injure my wrist and shoulder further.

The exception to this would be if I did dictation and did the majority of my editing via dictation rather than typing. I wonder if I should try doing dictation again? I’m a bit less stressed now, and my health is a little better, so maybe now would be a good time to try to get back into it.

The editing for dictation would still take a lot longer. Not only because of the errors from the dictation software, but because editing corrections via dictation just takes a lot longer. One reason I need to edit via dictation is to train the dictation software, but also since I’d be using dictation to lessen the strain on my hands, I’d want to do hands-free editing, too.

I’m just not sure if I could make dictation work. I’ve tried it several times, and the writing just doesn’t seem the same. I know that I would need to put in a lot of work to make the dictation successful, and that if I could do that, it would be worth it—not only to relieve stress on my hands, but also because writing via dictation is supposedly faster once you get the hang of it.

Well, maybe I can give it a shot with the Hawaii romance I’ll be working on next.

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