the time it takes to write a book

Today one of my seventh graders asked me how long it takes me to write a book. The question is reasonable, as I do, you know, put out around six books a year. It gave me some pause, though, because this last year I did change up, sort of, how I do things. 

How I used to do things was I would be working simultaneously on several second drafts/edits. I would work on one Pentalogy book, one Aughts Boys book, one Tinon book, one SKWC book, one Vendettic book, and one standalone. This resulted, a lot of the time, in things getting done in chunks. I would put out like four books in the same month because they'd all get done at the same time. Some time last year I moved to the revolutionary idea of only working on one book at a time. 

(Well, one second draft/edit at a time--I am, this year, running a first draft at all times now too because I just love drafting.) 

And it's been interesting. It's been easier to enmesh myself into a world, and I don't resent working on the Tinon books as much. I mean, sort of, I do, because they take me the longest to write, because I'm just not a fantasy person, but I don't as much. I can kinda get into them now, which is, one might say, better for everyone involved. I think it helps that the current Tinon book that I am writing, book three, has four POVs, and two of them at the very least will be exciting. 

So I dunno. First drafts take me less than a month. A first draft, for me, especially when it's not NaNo and I don't have to hit 50k, is more like a glorified outline than anything else. It's when I'm figuring out what the book will be and who the people are that inhabit it. My rewrites? A couple of months. If I'm really working at them they take less time. I'm about 6k into Bandit Born right now. I aim to have it published by the end of March. Will that happen? I have no idea. But I would say that, for me, beginning to end, the average book takes somewhere around four months. Which is short turnaround time, I know. 

But that's why I'm self-publishing. Short turnaround is good here. I've been watching someone just binge my books on KU and that, my friends, is why a big backlist matters.