At the beginning of this year, I thought it would be interesting to see how much time I spend writing and beta reading, so I started to keep track of my writing / beta reading time.
Now that the first half of the year is over, I took a look at the numbers.
| Writing | Beta reading | |
| January | 47 hours | 5 hours |
| February | 31 hours | 2 hours |
| March | 36 hours | 3 hours |
| April | 12 hours | 31 hours |
| May | 51 hours | 15 hours |
| June | 36 hours | 4 hours |
| TOTAL | 213 hours | 60 hours |
I was amazed to see how big the differences between some of the months are. On average, I spent 35.5 hours each month writing and 10 hours beta reading. Is that a lot? Very little? I have no idea, since I don’t have any other numbers to compare it to. But I think for someone who has a full-time job in addition to being a writer, I’m doing okay.
Obviously, the time spent beta reading takes away from my writing time, but I still don’t regret the time spent helping other writers with their manuscripts.
2/3 of my writing time is spent on the train. If it weren’t for the Deutsche Bahn (the German national railway company), it would probably take me two years to complete a novel. ;-)
So is anyone else here a statistics freak and keeping track of the time spent writing?
WOW, I for one think this is an enormous achievement Jae and while I am not a writer, I am a reader. Maybe us readers could keep stats on how many hours we read each month.
Thanks, Devlyn. I would be interested in your reading statistics.