How to Write a Book in 4 Hours

It has been said that everyone has as book in them; getting it out of them can be the hard part. Advice often given is to write as and when time is available, perhaps for half an hour or an hour a day. That's good advice, but it's clearly not ideal to build up and release concentration in such a short span. Years and years ago I noticed it being written of or said by some book people who caught my attention that around four hours was the magic number, and having recently come across it again, a magic number is clearly impossible to ignore. The common theme either explicit or implicit was that four hours was the amount of useful concentration one could expect from any one day. Of course, the other key element to concentration was peace and quiet.

Ian Fleming, for example, wrote for about four hours a day, split into a big session and a little session: "I write for about three hours in the morning... and I do another hour's work between six and seven in the evening. I never correct anything and I never go back to see what I have written... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day."* He wasn't the only one; Roald Dahl revealed: "What do I write? Four, four and a half hours a day," and I've seen it written that he wrote for three hours until lunch, and another hour or hour and a half after lunch, while the British Council reckons he worked in two 2 hour sessions. For his part, Dylan Thomas maintained a schedule, in theory at least, that included five hours of work in the afternoon. J. G. Ballard put in "two hours in the late morning, two hours in the early afternoon". Of course a book life – walking and thinking, writing and answering letters (paper or electronic), research, and so on – involves more than working on a manuscript, which must take place outside the four hours; and those four hours in some cases lean on a formula or on drawing from exploratory work. There is, besides, a plethora of writing about writers' schedules, many of which don't match this pattern.** Nevertheless, it seems a pattern worthy of note – neither to sip nor to binge.

So if you are writing, or considering writing, if possible, perhaps it's worth trying to fit four hours in, reassigning the time from those several short sessions if necessary; or conversely, limiting your time in front of a laptop to attempt to get the most out of it.

Sources: Rebecca Lee How Words Get Good; BBC Archive; BBC News Wales; British Council; jgballard.ca

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-37342271

britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/seven-lessons-roald-dahl-how-be-productive

dylanthomas.com/blog/dylans-writing-routine-part-two/

jgballard.ca/media/1984_paris_review.html

*It occurs to me that Ian Fleming seems always to be 'Ian Fleming' and not just 'Fleming', which one would think him legendary enough to be, possibly as a distinction from the discoverer of Penicillin

** For example theguardian.com/books/2007/nov/23/writers.rooms.martin.amis and theoryland.com/intvsresults.php?kwt=%27rj%27s%20routine%27

Published 9 July 2023

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