I feel like fifteen years with Fleetwood Mac was like working on my thesis, doing research for some kind of paper.
A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.
Projects can take years to exhibit proof-of-concept and a few more years to be converted into commercial realities.
Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
From initial concept to final build, 'Train' was close to a year in development. Much of this was research and letting the dynamics of the project come to the surface.
It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.
I love the idea of sharing some of what we find in the research phase with a select community of people early on as a perk for their donating, and then gauging their feedback.
