How to write a book in 1 week!
(And why you shouldn't)
A Look At How I Wrote
GhoulSpawn & The Lich Lord's Lover


By EelKat Wendy C Allen

How to write a book in 1 week! 
(And why you shouldn't) 
A Look At How I Wrote 
GhoulSpawn & The Lich Lord's Lover

How to write a book in 1 week! 
(And why you shouldn't) 
A Look At How I Wrote 
GhoulSpawn & The Lich Lord's Lover

I publish so many books a year that people often incorrectly assume that it takes me only 2 or 3 weeks to finish a book. (I publish 2 to 3 non-fiction articles 2k words+ a day, 2 to 3 short stories 4k words+ a week, and 3 to 4 novels 150k words+ a year. I have 170+ titles on Amazon across 15 pennames, and in total have published 130+ novels, 2,000+ short stories, 30+ non-fiction books, a few dozen stage plays and few comic books scripts, since 1978) The fact of the matter is I multi-task because I get easily bored if I work on one project for more than a few days in a row, so I'll have 10 or 12 book projects I'm working on at any one time and just publish each one as it gets finished.

So while a new book is published every few weeks, it actually takes about 4 years for a book to go from 1st draft, through 12 edits and 7 revisions, before I publish it.

However, I did once join a group of writers in a challenge to see how fast each of us could write, edit, format, and publish a book. For me the answer was 17 days. We gave ourselves a month, and strived for 1 week. (It wasn't any online challenge like NaNoWriMo or anything, it was just a group of local writers who decided to challenge each other for the fun of it to see what we'd end up with when we got done.)

Here's what I did: I spent the weekend writing non-stop, and after around 18 hours of no sleep, I had a 1st draft of around 45,000 words (which is no where's near enough to be classified as a novel, but my drafts tend to double or triple in size during the revision process, so for me, due to my writing process, a 45k draft typically would end up a 90k to 150k word novel when published - but that wasn't the case with this book - the first draft got published with barely any editing at all and no revisions.)

17 days after I started writing it, the book went live on Amazon. It was around 45,000 words/100 pages long, so VERY slim and barely able to pass as a novel, almost more of a fat novella.

Now... here's the important stuff:

Though I finished, edited, and published that book in record time (for me), I was unhappy with the end result. Here's why:

In reading the finished novel after it was published, I found multiple issues:


  • many simple spelling errors that I normally find during editing, slipped through to the published edition
  • many simple grammar errors that I normally find during editing, slipped through to the published edition
  • several glaring inconsistencies (including a primary character who had green eyes in chapter 4 and then had yellow eyes in chapter 32) that I normal find during the revision process, slipped through to the published edition
  • the ending sucked; it felt rushed, incomplete, and left several loose ends/plot holes unanswered/not cleared up; what could have been a great ending had I spent the time revising it enough to tie all the loose ends together, fell horribly flat
  • after it was published I found a HUGE error - an entire chapter (nearly 20 pages long) was in the book TWICE! (I write each chapter in a separate file, then paste them into the final document, apparently I accidently clicked paste twice - normally I would have caught this sort of error, had I been doing a careful edit)... interestingly, readers thought this was intended, because it was a time travel story and assumed the characters were reliving the day over with changes... I know this because readers contacted me to say they searched high and low for the difference between the two days and couldn't find one (which is how I discovered the chapter was there twice)
  • there were several scenes that completely made no sense and were just floating there between chapters at random (again, readers thought this intentional and tried to work out some hidden meaning to why these random scenes were there.)
  • blank pages. At multiple points, there were blank pages in the book, for no reason. this was caused to a glitch in the formatting of the document, that normally I would have noticed, had I been carefully looking and not rushing through the process

In the end, what was a good plot, great characters, and should have been an amazing story, failed to reach its full potential because I rushed through the entire process at mega speeds.

This experience taught me something: that while I could and did write, edit, and publish a book in under 30 days, I shouldn't have.

I have since unpublished the novel, and run it through my normal process.

Here's what I did:

  • first I deconstructed the book, breaking it down into separate chapters, one file per chapter
  • then I did an intensive rewrite of each chapter as though each was its own separate story
  • set it all aside for a month to work on other projects and "forget what I wrote" on this one
  • after a month, I reassembled the book, and did a complete, full draft rewrite of the entire thing as one complete story
  • set it all aside for a month to work on other projects and "forget what I wrote" on this one
  • after a month, I took it out and used ProWritngAid (https://prowritingaid.com/) to do it's first edit. (I have the premium lifetime paid version, so I have full access to all the features that are not available for the free edition, but the free edition is the best free grammar editing program out there if you are looking for a free editing software, I definitely recommend this one)
  • The ProWritingAid edit is intensive and takes multiple months (6 or more) to complete, with me spending 2 to 3 hours per page of the manuscript; the program highlights difficult to read sentences and "sticky" sentences, and I work on rewriting ALL of those first, before I move on the the spelling/grammar/consistency edits that it also does
  • set it all aside for a month to work on other projects and "forget what I wrote" on this one
  • after a month I deconstructed the book, AGAIN breaking it down into separate chapters, one file per chapter
  • then I did ANOTHER intensive rewrite of each chapter as though each was its own separate story
  • set it all aside for a month to work on other projects and "forget what I wrote" on this one
  • after a month, I reassembled the book, and did ANOTHER complete, full draft rewrite of the entire thing as one complete story
  • I continue to repeat this process until I feel the book is finished
  • in most cases, it takes me 4 years, 12 edits, and 7 re-writes before I feel the book is "done" and "ready" to publish; in other words, books that'll be published in 2018 were actually written in 2014)
  • For this particular book, this process took 3 years to complete.

Today the book is once again re-published, now as a revised and extended edition, is about 150,000 words, and the paperback edition has 405 pages. It is now the Epic Fantasy Time Travel novel that it was originally intended to be.

Interestingly, the duplicated chapter is STILL in the new edition. Because readers thought it was an intentional event of the characters reliving the day slightly different, I altered the plot to allow this to be the case and rewrote these two chapters to reflect that.

The error of the character whose eyes were green in one scene and yellow in another, also remains in the new edition, as readers noticed the error before I did and had already made fan art of this character who, thankfully was a half-Demon, and allowed me to rework his character slightly. Thus now thanks to this error, his eyes now change colours with his mood. When calm and relaxed his eyes are green, when excited, angry, or fearful his eyes turn yellow.

Learn from my mistake. Don't rush your book. Take your time and do it right. Both you and your readers will be happier with the end result.

So, I don't know if I could personally do a book in a week, but I know people who have. They, however, like myself are full time career authors and are used to intensive writing routines. They normally spend months or years on a book, and the book in a week was a lark to see if they could do it and not part of their normal routine. Like myself they too were unhappy with their results and later rewrote and republished revised editions of their books.

I have never encountered an author who wrote and published a book in under 3 months and was happy with the end result.

I personally do not recommend speed writing a book, especially if you are a beginner.

Okay.... why I do not recommend you try to write a book in a week, or even in 30 days...

No beginning writer is going to do this without fast finding themselves in the hospital, with carpal tunnel, pulled wrist muscles, blood clots in fingers, knuckle cramps, water retention at the joints, strains, sprains, and other such things, most of which require surgery to fix and will have your hands in casts for 12 weeks.

Writing is like playing sports. Because it uses a lot of muscles, it requires warm up exercises. Stress balls are good for this.

Also, like sports, never do it for extended periods. Write for no more than 45 minutes max. Then take a minimum 15 minute break.

In addition to hand, wrist, and finger injuries, you also need to be aware of leg, back, and neck issues, caused from extended sitting for too long to a time. Common problems writers are faced with include leg cramps, belly bulge, stiff neck, varicose veins, pinched nerves, slipped discs. All of which are caused by sitting and not moving. Thus every 45 minutes, get up and walk. Do a quick yoga session. Sit ups. Chin ups. Stair stretches. Chair Squats. Walk your dog around the block. Weed your garden. Walk down your driveway and get your mail. Something. Anything. Just get your blood circulating.

Drink A LOT of water. This is VERY, VERY, VERY important. If you are dehydrated, you'll pull the muscles out of your fingers. They will snap in half, right off the bone, require surgery to reattach, and your fingers will be in little funny looking casts for 6 damn months. Been there, done that. Never again. If you want to do high output typing, drink no less then one gallon of water a day. More is better.

I have found that it is best, to buy a 12 pack case of 24oz bottled water. And every hour, drink one. All of it. Then the next day, refill them all, and every hour, drink another one. That's 288oz of water a day. You need to keep your finger muscles "lubricated" so to speak, by making sure that your blood flow is circulating properly. Thus the getting up every 45 minutes, to walk around for 15 minutes AND drinking 24oz of water while you are up waking around.

Know that speed typing takes time and practice and you not going to learn it overnight. The average writer should strive for 35 to 50 words a minute. Programs like Dr. Wicked's Write or Die (https://www.writeordie.com/ free online browser app; I think they have a paid edition you can download on your computer as well--- DO NOT type anything you want to KEEP into tis - it erases your words to motivate you to type faster, if you beat the clock no words get erased, if you slow down it starts erasing words faster to speed you up; basically it's a flash player video game that teaches you how to reach super high typing speeds) will help you increase your typing speed.

If you really want to get into high speed typing, then you want to find a local college that offers secretary training courses and take a semester long class in secretarial typing. You'll be using old school typewriters, not computers, for a class like this. So no way to fix your mistakes, thus you need to have very good spelling and grammar prior to taking such a course. You will be required to pass a live timed test at the end the semester - to graduate you will need to type at a speed of 175 words per minute with at least 80% accuracy. (That's 10,500 words per hour, which is the MINIMUM required typing speed to get a secretary job in a high profile law office- it is not uncommon for professional secretaries to reach 200 words a minute - 12,000 words per hour). The bulk of the course, is you doing half hour of hand exercises, followed by half hour of typing practice - for 4 hours, 3 days a week, for 90 days of classes. You'll want to keep a lot of flexi-ice packs in your freezer, because you are going to need them. Your wrists are going to HURT. You'll be expected to be doing hand exercises and 4 hours of typing practice daily outside of class as well. Like grinding in a video game, this is probably the most boring, grueling class you could ever think to sign up for.

I struggled to reach the 175 words per minute to pass and had to take the final test 3 times before I passed. Since then I've never attempted to write 175 words per minute again.

People often look at me flying through NaNoWriMo zipping past 500,000 words in 30 days, and then try to do it as well.

DON'T!

Think of it like trying out for the Olympics. It's not something you jump into and do without training. A LOT of training. YEARS of training.

I'm trained for this.

I took Basic Secretarial Typing, and Advanced Secretarial Typing 1, 2, and 3. I have 4 semesters of training in this type of high speed, long term typing.

That's how I got an average daily speed of 91 words a minute, almost 5,000 words an hour. Most days I type around 17,000 words a day, because I don't just sit and type the full 8 hours I'm working. In fact I spend a lot more hours a day editing, then I do full stream typing. Keeping in mind, I type with one hand. I had a stroke years ago, my left hand is basically useless. But I didn't always do this. I trained for it. A lot of years of classes and very hard training went into my reaching this point. Also remember, I published my first book 40 years ago, in 1978. I'm not new to this. But also back then when I started out I struggled to reach 500 words a day. 3 years after publishing my first novel, I still struggled to reach 700 words a day. It took me a long time and a lot of determined persistence to get where I am.

To jump into writing a book in a week, when you've no training... it's like saying you climbed an 8 foot rock wall at a birthday party yesterday so tomorrow you are going to attempt Mt Everest.

You can do it, yes. EVENTUALLY. But don't plan on it happening overnight. Plan on training for years and years and years, seeing slow improvement over time. Take it slow and steady. Don't push yourself too fast. You have to build up your muscle strength. Hand muscles are fairly weak compared to the rest of your muscles. It takes them a lot of time to build up the strength for this kind of typing.

I've also have hand surgery 4 times in the past 5 years, have pulled my wrist muscles twice in each arm, in the past 7 years. Frequently have to go in for MRIs to check my bones for fractures. I have to wear wrist braces, most every day of my life, to support my muscles. You wrist muscles are not made for this type of output. Know that the authors who are putting out a lot of work fast, are also dealing with a lot of medical side effects caused by the high level of physical strain they put on their hands, wrists, and forearms.

If you were planning to be publishing 4 or 5 novels a year, then definitely seek out the training, but if you only plan to write one book, perhaps another 5 years from now, don't. It's not worth it.

Authors typing up 10-20 pages at a time are NOT beginners, not even close, they are not even intermediates. They are people with very advanced training, years of practice, and are doing this as a full time job, pumping out novels monthly. High output authors are not the norm. Very few writers actually do this. Average authors take 2 years per novels and there's nothing wrong with that.

Do not try to push yourself into high speed, high output writing, until you've done the research to find out the type of training needed to reach that style output. Also check with your doctor before attempting this so of thing, if you do decide to aim for it, because if you have any kind of muscle or blood disorder (like I do - I have Chronic Tendonitis and Parkinson's) you'll need extra training in how to work around this sort of thing.

Don't be fooled by the glamour of being an author. Many have a false perception of what a career author's life is like. Few are prepared for the amount of work needed to reach the "dream" they assume novel writing to be.

If you have a story, just write it at your own pace, between work and school and family. If it takes one year, two years, even ten years to finish it, that's perfectly all right.

The only time you want to focus on speed and hgh output, is if you are planning on novel writing as a career, which means you'll also plan to be publishing no fewer then 4 novels a year for the rest of you life. Not many people have that many novels in them. If you think you want to make this a career... then go to college, take secretary typing courses, English Literature courses, Creative Writing courses, Business Ownership courses,and Entrepreneurship courses. Then look into getting into personal training with a focus on strengthening your hand and wrist muscles. You'll want strong wrist muscles that can handle this type of high strain work.

Hopefully, that helps.

If you do intend to do this, be sure to put your health first, because it well put a strain on your health. a lot more then you'll expect. Far too many newbies permanently cripple themselves in high speed projects like you are planning, simply because they neglected the very important health precautions.

>>im looking to make a book similar to rich dad poor dad. I want to know how do the best book writers structure themselves to finish it in a week. I already know what the content is needed to put in there but i dont want to make the book like a blabbering journal. Thanks in advance!!!

Also, do your research... the Rich Dad Poor Dad book is ghost written.

He didn't write it.

He talked his idea into a voice recorder and then hired a professional writer to type it up for him. It was an audiobook - sort of - when it first started out.

It was cassette tapes he would hand out at his house flipping scan conventions (which I have attended and know how scammy they really are... do know that MOST of his advice on how to flip houses is EXTREMELY illegal and in most states will land you in jail. His book became a book after cassette tapes went out of vogue and thus is was easier to sell books then cassette tapes at the end of his seminar courses on house flipping.

The book ONLY became a bestseller because he was selling 100+ copies a day, quite literally out of the trunk of his car, after these big tent revival events he set up in towns all over the country. So if you want to succeed like he did, be sure you own a motorhome, a tent, and have printed up a few 100,000 copies of your books to sell face to face at your lectures, because that's what he did.

I had all his tapes and books and went to his lectures and like most everyone else was fooled into what he said... until I tried to put his method into practice and found out my state had laws prohibiting the type of listing houses for sale on ebay before you own them, method of house flipping that he was promoting.

In any case, he didn't write the book in a week and it took him more then a decade to go from the version on the cassette tapes to the version sold in a NOT SELF PUBLISHED trade published hardcover book edition currently available.

His book took 10 years to write and edit, so not sure why you were inspired by him to write yours in a week.


So, I was over on Reddit, you like I often am, and found this question. And answered it, like I do. However, the answer I initially gave was a simple generic answer. If you want to read my original answer unaltered, simply click on Reddit's embed feature links which Reddit provides for webmasters to be able to post their answers on their websites, while linking back to the original thread on Reddit (if you didn't know Reddit offered and encouraged the use of this feature, look for it in the "share" features underneath every post, comment, and reply on Reddit).

I am answering random questions today about world building, over on Reddit and decided to take my answers from there and expand upon them even further over here. So that's what this page is. Me rambling on about various aspects of world building techniques I use when writing the Quaraun series. The questions I am answering are embedded here. Clicking the link in the embedded question will take you to the original Reddit page where you can see the original answer along with other people's answers. If you wish to comment, you can do so on the Reddit page where a place to do so is provided.

In any case, as with all of my Reddit answers found on my site here, my original post on Reddit is much shorter then the article here.


Crosspost & Embed Features Are Now Live & Out Of Beta! Yay! (I've Been Beta Testing Both For The Last 6 Months Or So Now Everyone Can Use Them! Go Ahead And Share Any Post You Make or Find Here Via Embed and/or Crosspost! Have Fun!) from StorylWritersGroup








Ads by Amazon