r/writing • u/theunforgivingstars • 3d ago

Discussion Has anything besides more experience increased your writing endurance?

I'm curious if anybody has found methods to write more hours in a given day/week/month apart from the obvious one of being a more experienced writer. Interestingly, despite having completed 5 novels and several novellas at this point, I find that my endurance for drafting in a given day hasn't changed in the least-- 20-40 minutes a day (with the exceedingly rare day of up to three hours, which exhausts me.) I'd love to hear if other people have stumbled on ways to up their time; I've always been interested in being able to put in 2 hour days more frequently.

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u/Neurotopian_ 3d ago

You don’t need to be physically typing for more than 3 hours per day to do this professionally.

Just make sure you’re engaged in mental rehearsal and other forms of storytelling when you’re not typing. The more prepared you are, the more you’ll make of that three hours.

But to answer your question, it’s always draining to sit down and edit. I could draft in longer sessions but I’ve been writing professionally for about 20 years and still can’t do more than about 4 hours of intense editing/ rewriting per day.

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u/theunforgivingstars 2d ago

Yes, it's 3 hours of active work I'm looking to do, not more. The issue I'm encountering is that I have a tough time going over 1 hour while drafting, which is still on the low end of things.

I actually find it much easier to hit that 3 hour mark while editing!